


Genesis

by Scrawlers



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Anime)
Genre: Found Family, Gen, Papa Sycamore, Papa Wolf!Sycamore, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-27
Updated: 2016-09-27
Packaged: 2018-08-17 13:11:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8145262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scrawlers/pseuds/Scrawlers
Summary: While on an expedition to locate a houndour pack that caused a village hidden in the forest off Route 10 some trouble in recent times, Augustine happens upon a five-year-old orphan boy hiding out in the mountains.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This fic takes place ten years prior to canon, and serves as the origin story for how Professor Sycamore first met Alan. While his specific age is stated much later in the fic, I know it can be distracting to not know right away, so I’ll say up front that I imagine Sycamore to be ~35 in canon, which makes him 25 here.
> 
> Fulbert is an OC, technically, but he was loosely based on the scientist in the game who gives the player the PokéRadar. I needed Sycamore to have a colleague for this fic, but I imagined Sophie would be too young, and so I borrowed the PokéRadar scientist . . . and then expanded on him wholesale. His characterization just happened. Sometimes things just work out that way.
> 
> As a final note, technically pokégears are Johto items, but I went with the assumption that perhaps Holo Casters might not have existed ten years pre-canon, and as such, they might have used pokégears in Kalos back then instead.

Nestled at the base of a mountain so far in the woods off the standard trail of Route 10 that it would take less of a map and more of a mercy from the Fates to find, Isolé Village carried the air of a town that was unaware that time was supposed to move forward at a decent kip. The lack of cellular reception that made Fulbert groan and grumble as he stuffed his pokégear back into his pocket aside, all of the buildings in the village (settlement might have been a better word for it, really—a little cluster of buildings contained within the small pocket created by the trees and mountain range at the back) looked to be at least thirty years out of style with the rest of the architecture in Kalos. Most of the buildings were fashioned out of wood (which was, Augustine thought, the primary reason why they had so much trouble with the houndour raid), and those that weren’t were constructed from stone. Choice in material aside, no house was greater than one story, and none of the businesses (of which there seemed to be only one of each variety: a general mart, a diner, a pharmacy . . .) looked big enough to contain more than one main room for business and perhaps one room in back for storage. There were no Pokémon Centers in sight.

But even with the rustic architecture and construction of the tiny village, it was clear that the reason why it looked as if it was falling apart had less to do with the fact that it was doubtful any new construction had taken place over the last several decades, and more to do with the fact that most of the buildings contained within it had been set on fire very recently. Scorch marks streaked the earth, leaving large dirt trails where it was evident grass used to grow, and soot was caked into the stone of the fountain in the center of town. Most of the buildings had holes that had been temporarily patched over with tarps or mismatched boards, and there were great black marks on the sides and front of nearly every building where it was clear a fire had been hastily put out. Half of the general store sign was missing so that it read _GENER_ instead, and there was a sign on the door of the diner that read, _CLOSED DUE TO HOUNDOUR PANTRY INVASION._

“Seems like we found the right place,” Fulbert said, though he looked disgruntled as he patted the pocket that contained his pokégear. “Even if we’re about thirty years too early.”

“It would be kind of ironic if a pack of houndour we were tracking just so happened to come raid the same village once every thirty years, wouldn’t it?” Augustine asked, and he grinned. “Particularly considering that I wouldn’t have been born yet.”

“Neither would I,” Fulbert said, indignant. “We’re the same age.”

“Are we?” Augustine asked, and his smile grew as Fulbert’s scowl deepened. “Oh, that’s right! I forgot again, my mistake. Well, what do you say we put that behind us and find the mayor of this humble town so we can get this show on the road?”

Fulbert looked as if he wanted to rise to Augustine’s teasing and press the point, but his distaste for being in such a remote area won out over his annoyance. “Fine. Sooner we get the info we need, the sooner we can find the houndour and get out of the sticks. I’m in.”

Augustine beamed. “That’s the spirit!”

Fulbert shook his head as he turned and started deeper into the village, attracting more than a few stares from the townspeople (who were, in contrast to the state of their hamlet, dressed in reasonably modern clothing if several years out of current fashions). But no matter how disgruntled his colleague was, Augustine couldn’t keep the grin off his own face.

Fulbert was not wrong when he pointed out that they were the same age, and if one wanted to be technical, Fulbert was actually several months younger. But aside from being built like an ursaring and sporting a beard that could make a hiker feel like a youngster, Fulbert had a habit of examining every situation with the same attitude a middle-aged man might take to newspapers bearing stories of rambunctious youth setting up underground rollerblading clubs in the local parks. No matter the situation, there was a serious and often grave angle to it that Fulbert was sure to spot and grouch about within the first five minutes of examining it. He was physically capable of smiling and laughing, of course, but his usual state of perpetual grump made it difficult for Augustine not to try and prod the fun out of him every now and again. That they had been roommates in university and had decided to partner up to aid in each other in their various areas of research after school only made it more irresistible.

This venture was one such joint project of theirs. For the past three years Augustine and Fulbert had been tracking several different species of pokémon around the Kalos region. Fulbert’s area of research focused primarily on regional variations within different species—whether or not species that were born and raised in certain areas would have varying capabilities or markings compared with species born and raised in other areas, and other such hypotheses of that nature. Augustine, meanwhile, was intrigued by the concept of mega evolution (something which had very little evidence documented for it so far and which Fulbert had warned was not likely to result in a breakthrough big enough to sustain Augustine’s profession, but Augustine waved his concerns off), and was intent on following houndour given that its evolution, houndoom, was one of the pokémon that historical records said was capable of mega evolution. Perhaps by studying houndour, Augustine could stumble across a clue that would help him progress his research. (And if not, well, it was fun to tag and track houndour, so it wasn’t as if he was really wasting his time anyway.)

By while the houndour had kept to their standard areas along Route 10 in the previous years, this year Augustine received an e-mail pleading for help from the mayor of Isolé Village, claiming that a pack of wild houndour had rampaged through and destroyed half the town. (How they managed an internet connection at all in such a remote location puzzled Augustine and Fulbert both, but Augustine was curious to find out.) Worried that it was their houndour pack, Augustine and Fulbert set out to investigate, and when their pack was missing from their normal dens, they opted to begin their search with the village and spread out from there to find out what had driven their pups off course.

It was likely going to be easier said than done, as Fulbert feared, but Augustine was looking forward to the adventure.

The mayor’s residence was, according to her e-mail, nearer to the back of the village, positioned just in front of the well. That was where they headed and where they found (who Augustine assumed to be) her, carrying a laundry basket containing a moving bundle of sheets as she made her way across the town square.

“Excuse me!” Augustine called, and when she looked up he waved and offered her a bright smile. “Would you happen to be Mayor Gosselin, by chance?”

“Yes, and you . . . oh!” the mayor’s face brightened as she took in Augustine’s and Fulbert’s lab coats, and she shifted the laundry basket so that it was tucked under her arm instead. The bundle of blankets inside of it continued to shift and move around. “Are you the professors? Professor Sycamore, and . . . ?”

“Fulbert. I’m a colleague of Professor Sycamore’s,” Fulbert said, shaking the mayor’s hand in turn.

The mayor beamed widely at the pair of them. “It’s a pleasure to meet you both. Thank you so much for coming out. I’m impressed you managed to find us so quickly!”

“So am I,” Fulbert muttered, “considering it’s so far out in the—”

“We’re both well-traveled, and we’re familiar with the area due to our research, so all it took was a little extra legwork and determination to find you all,” Augustine cut in. The mayor gave Fulbert a bemused look for a moment before she smiled gratefully at Augustine once again.

“Well as I said, we’re so grateful you could make it. Here, come with me; I’ll fix you both up a cup of . . . tea or coffee, whichever you prefer, and we can have ourselves a talk about the current situation. Whatever help you can provide we’d be most grateful for.”

“We’ll certainly do what we can,” Augustine said, and he motioned for Fulbert to follow the mayor first as she led the way back to her home. Fulbert rolled his eyes but followed Augustine’s gesture, and Augustine grinned.

The mayor’s home had, thankfully, seemed to be spared the worst of the damage caused by the houndour pack. There were only a few errant scorch marks marring the wood on the outside, and the inside seemed clean, open, and inviting. Potted plants hung in the corners of the living room, and while the coffee table was crafted from aged oak, the small, lacy table cloth fitted over it was charming, and there were coasters protecting the surface from any condensation caused by glasses. Augustine and Fulbert took seats on the sofa (Fulbert looking a bit uncomfortable, no doubt to the quaint furnishings), and the mayor set the laundry basket she had been carrying on one of the chairs nearest the door before she headed into the kitchen.

“What would you gentlemen like?” she called. “Tea? Coffee?”

“Whichever would be easiest for you,” Augustine said. “Would you like some help?”

“Oh no, you’re our guests! What sort of hostess would I be if I had you serve yourselves, hm? Besides, so long as you can help rid us of that houndour menace, you’ll be helping more than enough, trust me.”

“Don’t know ‘rid you of’ is the phrasing I’d use,” Fulbert said beneath his breath, tapping his fingers against his legs.

“So long as we discover what attracted them to the village in the first place, we can modify it and she—the village won’t know the difference,” Augustine replied, using the same undertone. “Though I agree, her word choice could be a little better.”

Fulbert grunted, but otherwise didn’t reply.

They were quiet for the next few minutes as the mayor prepared their drinks in the kitchen, Augustine surveying the room as Fulbert drummed his fingers against his thighs. Every now and then the laundry basket on the chair would wobble and shake, and Augustine felt his curiosity gnawing at him like a pikachu on a frayed wire. Just when he was about to get up and investigate it (manners be damned) the mayor entered the room with a tea tray and three cups, which she set on the table before them.

“Here we are! Three nice cups of tea,” she said. Augustine and Fulbert both sat up to take theirs as the mayor sat down in the only remaining empty seat. As she did so, the laundry basket shook again, wobbling ominously. Augustine watched it before he looked over at the mayor, who raised her eyebrows at him.

“What is—?”

Before he could finish his sentence _something_ burst up through the bundle of sheets in the basket, startling Fulbert enough so that he splashed his tea on himself with a hissed profanity. As he grabbed a napkin off the tea tray to help himself, Augustine saw that the creature previously in the basket was a bunnelby, which bounded over to the coffee table, nose twitching.

“So you’ve finally decided to come out now that you know something’s been prepared, have you?” the mayor said, her tone caught somewhere between stern and amused. The bunnelby’s ears twitched, and he looked at her hopefully. She shook her head. “No, that tea is for our guests. You know where you can find your own food.”

The bunnelby pouted, but then bounded around the sofa to head to another part of the house.

“A laundry basket is an interesting choice of carrier for your pokémon,” Augustine said, smiling, and the mayor laughed as Fulbert wadded up the napkin he had used to clean the tea from himself and stuffed it in his pocket.

“Oh, he isn’t mine. He’s wild. We have bunnelby all over the village. They seem to like infesting our laundry most of all, but really they scamper every which way they can.” She shrugged. “We used to think of them as pests, but they’re far from our biggest and they behave better in comparison, so we don’t mind them much. We just set out food for them so they don’t get into ours.”

“Setting out food will just encourage them to stay,” Fulbert said, frowning. He glanced at Augustine. “And that might be what attracted the houndour.”

“The houndour shouldn’t want the same food the bunnelby eat, though,” Augustine said. “Unless of course they were hunting the bunnelby . . . but I don’t see why they would go this far for prey. Route 10 didn’t seem to be suffering a lack of other pokémon.”

“They didn’t seem to be hunting the bunnelby, neither,” the mayor said, and both Augustine and Fulbert looked back to her, Augustine taking a sip of his tea (and doing his best not to grimace at the taste). “If they were, why would they attack our buildings? They ransacked the whole village, I’m sure you saw. Fires everywhere, they completely cleaned out the diner . . . it was a wonder we managed to chase them off. I’m still not sure we did. They didn’t seem intimidated by us, at any rate; one of them ripped Maurice’s broom from his hands and destroyed the thing.”

“Was it a wooden broom?” Fulbert asked.

The mayor gave him a quizzical look. “Yes, why?”

“Why would Maurice, whoever he is, try and chase off a houndour with a wooden broom?” Fulbert demanded, and the mayor opened her mouth as if to rebut, but didn’t manage to say anything before he said, “Houndour are fire-types. Even if one of them didn’t take it, they could have just set it on fire. Then he’d be holding a flaming broom and the houndour would still be there. What part of that seems like a good idea?”

“That aside,” Augustine said, as the mayor drew herself up in an offended huff, “can you think of anything specific the houndour did, or seemed to be doing? Did it look as if it was a coordinated hunt? Did you notice any odd behavior from them—any stumbling, dizzy or confused movements, unusual salivating—anything like that?”

“Not that I can remember, but I’m not the most familiar with houndour. We don’t usually see them ‘round here, and I’m not one of the ones that goes out for supply runs,” the mayor said. “They just seemed wild to me, but I know they hit up every building before they finally headed back to the mountains.”

“Back?” Augustine exchanged a glance with Fulbert, who gave him a puzzled frown in return.

“Well, that’s where they’re from, right?” the mayor asked. “From up in the mountains?”

“Not at this time of year, no, and definitely not when they came through here. They should have still been back on Route 10,” Fulbert said.

“But their usual dens were empty. It did seem as if they moved on, though there was no hint as to why . . .” Augustine set his teacup back on the tray. He wasn’t going to finish it. “They must have moved on early. The reason why is likely related to whatever it was that compelled them to come through here.”

“You’re sure you don’t know anything?” Fulbert asked the mayor, and Augustine discreetly kicked his ankle as an admonishment for his rude tone. Fulbert didn’t so much as twitch. “Anything at all?”

“Like I said, I’m just not familiar with houndour. None of us are. All I know is that when they were done they booked it back to the mountains,” the mayor said. “I can show you the path, if you’d like.”

Fulbert opened his mouth—to turn down her offer, if Augustine knew him, and Augustine did—but Augustine cut across him before he could reply. “That would be most helpful, thank you.”

The mayor smiled, and set her own teacup down on the tea tray. “Certainly, Professor. Come with me, and I’ll show you the way at once.”

She rose from her chair and headed toward the front door, and as Fulbert set his own (empty, amazingly) teacup down on the tea tray with the other two, he hissed, “It’s not like the mountains are hidden or hard to find. We can get there ourselves.”

“There’s no reason to turn down her offer, especially since she couldn’t give us much other information,” Augustine replied, his own voice barely above a whisper. “Be nice and let her help, it won’t hurt you.”

Fulbert made a sound deep in his throat that sounded an awful lot like _harumph_ (which was, in Augustine’s dignified and educated opinion, a crotchety old man grunt if he had ever heard one), and Augustine followed suit. The mayor smiled at them again as they joined her at the door, and without further prompting opened it so that she could lead them out (leaving it open for a second longer than necessary so that the bunnelby from before could dart through and bound across the grass).

“You really should watch out about letting wild pokémon roam your house,” Fulbert said. “Bunnelby might be cute, but that doesn’t mean they can’t bite or cause damages.”

“Oh, they’re fine,” the mayor said, waving her hand dismissively. Augustine grinned as Fulbert scowled. “Like I said, they’re hardly the worst nuisance we have to contend with, although . . .” She looked up at the sky, pondering something, and then smiled. “It’s the end of the month, so at least that’ll be off my family’s plate in short order. For a little while, anyway.”

“What will?” Augustine asked.

“Never you mind that, now. You’ve got enough to worry about with the houndour without having to handle our other problems, too,” she said. Augustine glanced at Fulbert, who gave him a look and shrug that plainly said _‘well, she’s right about that one’_ in response.

The mayor led them to the base of the mountain, which—as Fulbert had pointed out—was more or less a straight shot through the village, not too far from the mayor’s own home. In fact, Augustine was perplexed to see that—the gap of wilderness between the mountains and village aside—the only thing that really seemed to be standing between the mountains and the village was no longer actually standing: the remnants of a small fence littered the earth, completely dismantled save for a few of the posts on either side.

“We put that up ages ago to try and deter wild pokémon from coming too close,” the mayor said, noticing Augustine and Fulbert’s stares. Fulbert gave her an appalled look. “It didn’t wrap all the way ‘round the village, of course, but our previous mayor—that is, the mayor before the mayor before me—thought that they might still get the picture . . . well. The houndour didn’t seem to, anyway.”

“Unbelievable,” Fulbert said. Augustine elbowed him in the ribs.

“Well, we’ll take it from here. We have a fairly good idea of where to start. Thank you so much for your help,” Augustine said.

“Glad to do whatever I can to make sure this whole thing gets resolved,” the mayor said. She paused, and then added in a worried tone, “Are you sure you’ll be all right up there, Professor? Should we send help if you’re not back by a certain time?”

“Ah, no. I might not quite be on the level of a hiker, but I’ve certainly done my fair share of traveling in my day,” Augustine said, and he clapped Fulbert on the shoulder. “Besides, I have my faithful colleague here with me, and despite his age he could survive in the mountains for weeks without tiring.”

“We’re the _same age_ ,” Fulbert said, and he jerked his shoulder out from under Augustine’s palm.

“So you really needn’t worry,” Augustine told the mayor, ignoring Fulbert. “We’ll be just fine.”

The mayor smiled, although her smile seemed a bit uncertain in the face of Fulbert’s sour scowl. “Well, all right then,” she said. “But you make sure to come on back down if you need anything at all, you hear?”

“Yes ma’am. Thank you for your kindness.” Augustine bowed courteously (Fulbert inclined his head in a little jerk), and after returning it, the mayor turned to head back toward the village. When she was out of earshot, Augustine turned to Fulbert and said, “You could at least try to be a little polite.”

“Me? I’m just being honest. You want to see rude, _you_ didn’t even finish your damn tea,” Fulbert shot back.

The aftertaste of the tea still lingered in Augustine’s mouth, and he couldn’t help but grimace a little. “It wasn’t very good tea,” he said.

“Hah, see, and you call _me_ rude.”

“It’s not as if I told _her_ that her tea was bad! _That_ would have been rude. I simply didn’t finish it because we have work to do. You’re the one constantly trying to refuse her hospitality and making fun of their—what used to be their fence.”

“Look at it.” Fulbert gestured to the ruins of the fence. Upon giving it a more serious look, Augustine could see that even when it was standing it would still fall short of the village borders by a few feet on either side. “What pokémon was that supposed to deter? Caterpie? There aren’t even caterpie out here.”

“At least they tried. It was a solid idea,” Augustine said. When Fulbert gave him a flat look, he grinned. “No, it really was. That wood looks like it was pretty sturdy when it was still standing. It was definitely solid.”

Fulbert gave him a look of deep disgust, and turned toward the mountain trail. “I’m leaving you for dead in these mountains. Goodbye, Augustine.”

Augustine laughed, and jogged after to catch up. “You would never. But if we are getting started, how do you want to handle this, hm? I’m sure we can take care of this within the day—two at most—but as fun as this adventure is bound to be I think we should have some sort of plan before we get started.”

“Augustine Sycamore wants to use a plan. Wonders will never cease,” Fulbert said. This time it was Augustine’s turn to roll his eyes. Fulbert paused in the middle of the dirt path, and squinted against the sun at the mountain range that stretched before them. “We can cover more ground if we split up, and I think I see a fork ahead. You take the left, I take the right?”

“Sounds like as good a plan as any. And here, I had a feeling that we would lose cell reception out here, and so . . .” Augustine dug into his travel bag, pushing past his notebooks, travel mug, and other equipment to produce two large walkie-talkies. He held one up in each hand, beaming as he said, “Ta-da!”

Fulbert gave him a nonplussed stare. “What are those?”

“They’re walkie-talkies. You know, devices that can allow us to communicate over long distances.” Augustine poked Fulbert in the shoulder with the antennae of one of the walkie-talkies. “For such an old man, you really are clueless when it comes to the technology of your generation. I know you really want to fit in with the youth and use all their tech instead, but—”

Fulbert swiped the walkie-talkie from Augustine’s hand, and in the same beat punched Augustine’s shoulder with his other fist. Compared to how hard Augustine knew Fulbert _could_ hit (with the broken hinges of their dorm room door after they locked themselves out one winter serving as proof) Augustine knew that Fulbert hadn’t hit him that hard, but he still rubbed the spot nonetheless.

“I know what a walkie-talkie is,” Fulbert snapped, and he held it up and shook it a little as he said, “But what I want to know is what _century_ this one is from. Did you get this up from the sunken part of the S.S. Cactus?”

“They’re not _that_ old,” Augustine said, and he couldn’t help but sound a bit defensive as he examined his own. “I found them in my parents’ attic the last time I visited. I think they’re charming.”

Fulbert snorted. “Charming. It’ll be real charming when we’re stuck up there and they don’t work.”

“I tested them before I took them from my parents’ house. They work just fine,” Augustine said, and he smacked the antennae of his own walkie-talkie against Fulbert’s shoulder. Fulbert gave him a skeptical look that Augustine didn’t think dignified addressing. “Let’s just get started, shall we? We can radio one another through the walkie-talkies if we find anything, and we’ll meet back here in two hours to discuss regardless of whether we find anything or not so that we can change our strategy if necessary. Agreed?”

“That’s the most logical plan I’ve ever heard you produce in your life, so yes,” Fulbert said.

Part of Augustine wanted to tap Fulbert on the head with his walkie-talkie this time, but he settled for smirking instead. “I disagree. Don’t you remember the pulley system I created so that we could bring food we had delivered to us up to our dorm via the window so that we didn’t have to go down into the cold to get it during the winter months?”

Fulbert shook his head, and started up the mountain path again, veering to the right as they had discussed. “I repeat, this is the most logical plan I’ve ever heard you produce in your life,” Fulbert said.

“You made great use of that pulley system! You used it just as many times as I did!” Augustine said, and he raised his voice as he took to the left path, walking backwards so that he could call after Fulbert’s back.

“That doesn’t mean it wasn’t ridiculous!” Fulbert shouted back, without turning.

Augustine smiled, but they were too far apart now for Fulbert to hear anything lower than a shout, and he didn’t feel like raising his voice that loudly to continue the discussion. He turned around to continue up the mountain trail properly, stuffing his walkie-talkie back into his travel bag as he did so.

For the about first fifteen minutes, Augustine’s trek was uneventful. The left path into the mountain was narrow and wound up in a gentle incline, the rock beneath his feet well worn by weather and pokémon alike, and eventually it opened up to a plateau overlooking an oval-shaped canyon. Augustine walked to the edge and looked over, staring down at the winding paths as they led the way down to the dusty canyon floor (a steep enough drop that even Augustine felt a little dizzy looking at it), dotted with shrubs and barren trees. Geodude, sandshrew, and a few other rock and ground-types shifted and scurried along the paths below, and after he fished his binoculars from his travel bag he could see what looked to be scorch marks similar to those spotted in the village along the rock walls much farther down. That was as good a clue as any for where to start looking for the houndour, he thought, though the idea of having to trek all the way down there seemed much less fun than it had when they had first arrived in Isolé.

Aside from the wind and the occasional distant scuffle of a pokémon, the mountain was silent, and so when something kicked a few errant rocks across the ground behind Augustine, the sound echoed conspicuously around the canyon. Augustine turned quickly (careful to keep his balance on the canyon edge), but aside from the large boulders that he had already made note of upon first reaching the plateau, he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. He listened hard, watching and waiting, his hand straying toward his coat pocket just in case he needed to call upon his furret for protection. For a few tense seconds, nothing moved. Then, so quick that he almost missed it, Augustine caught sight of something moving just behind the boulder closest to the entry path—something that, from the small glimpse he received, looked like a tuft of black hair inching out from behind the massive rock before it darted out of sight again. Once again there was the sound of something shifting against the gravel before going still, the sound deliberate and cautious and unlike what Augustine would expect from a wild pokémon.

Augustine relaxed, and lowered his hand from his pocket, watching the boulder curiously.

Whatever—or whoever—was behind it didn’t move again for another long moment, whether just to shift their position or risk taking another peek from around it. Augustine checked his watch every few seconds, keeping track, and by the time three full minutes had passed and it was clear that the mystery guest spying on him wasn’t going to come out of their own volition, Augustine squatted down on the rock and called, “Hey there. Why don’t you stop hiding and come out?”

The moment Augustine spoke up, there was the sound of shifting rock again—sudden and spontaneous, as if his voice had shocked the one who heard it, or at least startled them enough so that they kicked the loose rock around them by mistake. Other than that, there was no sound and no other indication that Augustine’s mystery guest had heard him for a long moment. But finally, after nearly another full minute had passed, someone cautiously peeked out from around the side of the boulder.

It—he—was a child. A boy, from the looks of him, and while Augustine wouldn’t claim to be an expert on children by any stretch, he guessed that this one couldn’t have have been much older than five. The grey, long-sleeved shirt he was wearing was a couple of sizes too big for him, spilling easily over his waist despite how his hands (drowning in his sleeves as they were) clutched at the hem, and the worn and dirt-specked blue jeans he was wearing seemed to be much the same, dragging on the ground (though not quite enough to hide the boy’s bare toes). The boy’s black hair was all over the place in a wild disarray, and his eyes were wide and as blue as the sky above.

Though he had finally summoned the courage to look around the boulder, the boy didn’t step out from behind it. Instead, he placed one hand against the rock as a form of support, the other still scrunching the hem of his shirt in a tightly balled fist, his stare wary. Augustine stayed where he was, crouched on the ground, and—in the absence of knowledge on how to handle human children specifically—decided to approach him the same way he would a frightened wild pokémon.

“You can come out,” he said, and he extended his hand, palm up, toward the boy, who recoiled a little. “It’s safe. I won’t hurt you, I promise.”

The boy said nothing, but continued to scrutinize him in heedful silence. But Augustine kept his hand out, calm and at ease in the hopes of transferring that same comfort to the boy, and after about another minute the boy finally stepped slowly out from around the boulder.

“There you go,” Augustine said gently, and as the boy came nearer (each step small, both hands clutching the hem of his shirt again, his lips pressed tightly together in a frown and his eyes never once leaving Augustine), he drew his hand slowly back. “See? There’s nothing to be afraid of. You don’t need to hide.”

The boy stopped a few paces in front of Augustine (still not quite within arm’s reach), and despite the fact that he had finally come out from his hiding place, he somehow looked more tense than he had before. His eyes darted around the canyon before he finally settled for staring at the ground instead, and in his silence it almost looked as if he was waiting for something. After another thirty seconds or so passed without the boy saying anything, Augustine decided to try again.

“So, have you . . . been up here long?” he asked. He didn’t think the boy had followed him up, after all—he would have heard or noticed him before he managed to hide behind the rock, surely—but at the same time, there didn’t seem to be anyone else up there with them. No parents, no guardians, not even any other children, and he didn’t see how the boy could have made it up here by himself. But whether he had or hadn’t, the boy didn’t offer an answer; instead, he glanced quickly up at Augustine before he looked away again, staring back down at the ground. Augustine decided to try a different track. “My name is Professor Sycamore. What’s yours?”

Silence. No eye contact. The boy chewed on his lower lip, his fists balled so tightly in the hem of his shirt that it looked like he was shaking a little, visibly more than a little uncomfortable. Augustine frowned, at a loss for what to do. Talking wasn’t getting them anywhere, and he didn’t want to risk scaring the boy by moving any closer too suddenly . . .

He blinked, and then smiled as a sudden idea came to him, swinging his travel bag around to the front again. The boy jumped a little, looking quickly back at him, but Augustine didn’t pause as he rummaged in his bag and produced a chocolate chip granola bar from inside its depths.

“Here we go!” he said, and he held it up for the boy to see. The boy stared at it, and didn’t move. “Candy is good, isn’t it? Do you like candy?” No response, not even in the form of a nod or a shake of the boy’s head. “Well, this isn’t exactly candy,” Augustine admitted. “It’s granola. But it has chocolate chips, and those are sort of like candy, aren’t they?” Still the boy didn’t move, save to look back down at the ground, and Augustine’s smile fell along with his hand. “That’s no good either, huh?”

Augustine returned the granola bar to his bag (and realized, as he did so, that offering candy to a child he didn’t know was something that would be sure to earn him an uncomfortable talk with the local police if anyone ever found out about it), at a loss for what to do. The boy didn’t retreat back to the boulder, but he didn’t move closer, either. Augustine didn’t want to force the child to talk to him if he didn’t want to, nor did he want to take the child along against his will, but at the same time he didn’t think he could just leave the boy there by himself, either. In the minutes that had passed no one came to join them, and even setting aside the lack of food, shelter, and shoes on the boy’s feet—setting aside the natural dangers of rock slides, tumbles off the side of the gorge, or sudden storms—Augustine could not in good conscience leave the boy there to be possibly attacked or even eaten by wild pokémon. As Fulbert had pointed out back in the village, even a bunnelby could be dangerous if provoked. For a defenseless five-year-old child, that was especially true.

Another awkward stretch of silence passed between them, and after another couple moments of thinking Augustine decided to switch tracks yet again. This time he rummaged through his things until he found a small notepad and worn down pencil, which he held up for the boy to see. The boy glanced at both items, curious and alert, but still didn’t offer a word.

“Candy aside, I’m actually doing research here in the mountains,” Augustine said. “More specifically, I’m looking for certain pokémon—houndour. Do you know what those are?”

For just a moment, the boy looked stricken. His eyes widened, his mouth dropping open a little, before he clenched his jaw and looked back at the ground again, his shoulders hunched and his expression suggesting he was about to either cry, flee, or both. Augustine hastily continued.

“I’m looking for the—for them because they’re . . . friends of mine,” he said, figuring that was the easiest way to explain it so the boy could understand. “But it’s going to be a bit hard because I’m not too familiar with this area, and once I find them there will be a lot of writing to do, too—writing that might be hard if I have to also hold the . . . hold _them_ while I write. So I was wondering, if you aren’t too busy, if you would want to help me with my research.” He smiled. “You could be my assistant for the day. How about it?”

The boy had noticeably relaxed (though he still looked overtly wary) when Augustine claimed the houndour as his friends, and as Augustine talked about his research, the boy had watched him carefully. In the seconds that followed Augustine’s offer the boy did nothing but stare at him, but then—slowly, and in movements so small Augustine might have missed them if he hadn’t been paying the boy his sole attention—the child nodded.

Augustine beamed, relief flooding him. “Marvelous!” he said, and the boy jumped a little again at Augustine’s sudden shout. Augustine laughed, and smiled sheepishly. “Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to startle you. But, here.” He held out the small notepad and pencil toward the boy as he said, “You’ll need these if you’re going to be my assistant. Do you know how to write?”

Once again the boy nodded, and with some trepidation finally stepped within arm’s reach so that he could gently take both the notepad and the pencil from Augustine. He held the pencil in a tight fist, and looked with some degree of wonder at the notepad in his other hand. Augustine smiled as he stood up.

“Well, we should get started, then,” he said. The boy looked back up at him, craning his head back to see. Augustine looked back over the canyon. “I thought I saw some scorch marks down that way, so I think that would be a good place to start looking. Although . . .” He glanced back at the boy, once again noting the child’s lack of shoes. “It might be a bit dangerous for you . . . where are your shoes?”

The boy looked down at his feet, his toes curling against the ground, and shrugged his shoulders. Augustine sighed, and combed his fingers through his hair.

“Well, I don’t want you walking around here without shoes. You’ll cut up your feet that way, not to mention how much easier it would be for you to fall, especially as we make our way down the slope.” Unsurprisingly the boy didn’t offer any input, and so Augustine said, “So that being the case, I think the only real solution is for me to carry you on my shoulders. Does that sound all right to you?”

The boy stared up at him with wide eyes, and when he realized that Augustine was waiting for a confirmation, nodded. Augustine smiled, waited a beat to make sure the boy was ready and wouldn’t be frightened again, and then scooped the child up off the ground and sat the boy on his shoulders. The second the boy was up there he clutched at Augustine’s hair with the hand that held the pencil, his other hand impeded by the little flipbook that smacked against Augustine’s head in the boy’s attempt to hold on. Augustine chuckled.

“It’s a good idea to hold on, but you don’t have to worry,” he said. He held up each of the boy’s legs, holding him just below his knees, to show the child what he meant. “I’m holding on to you, too. I won’t let you fall, I promise.”

As expected, the boy said nothing, and Augustine started down the rocky path. But as Augustine made his way down, occasionally pointing out the various pokémon he spotted along the way and telling the boy a little about each one, the child relaxed and rested both arms and chin on the top of Augustine’s head. It was a good sign, Augustine thought. Even if the child wouldn’t (couldn’t?) talk, if they were reaching a point where he was less fearful and stressed, that gave Augustine hope that they could perhaps locate his parents or guardians. Perhaps if Augustine gained enough of his trust, the boy would be able to communicate where his parents were in some way, even if that way wasn’t verbal.

When they reached the part of the trail that had the scorch marks, Augustine squatted down (carefully, so as not to jostle the boy riding on his shoulders), and brushed his finger against the rock. He pursed his lips as he examined the dirt on his fingers. Some of it was standard canyon dust, but there was fresh soot mixed in, too. But on that part of the slope he couldn’t see any caves, much less any dens, and so it didn’t make sense why the houndour would—

The boy tapped the top of Augustine’s head—gently, just enough to get his attention—and Augustine looked up into the bright blue eyes that were staring back down at him. Wordlessly, the boy pointed back at a spot down below them, farther down in the gorge. Augustine looked over the side, but he couldn’t see what the boy was getting at—couldn’t see anything but the bottom of the canyon still some distance down below.

“Do you think the houndour are down there somewhere?” Augustine asked. He looked up again in time to see the boy nod. Augustine glanced back at the scorch marks on the canyon wall—semi-recent, but with no obvious den in sight—and shrugged. “Well, that’s the best lead I’ve got and you are my assistant, so I will take your word for it. Let’s keep going.”

The canyon slopes had formed something of a natural serpentine, not unlike the platforms in the first stage of _Donkey Kong_ (one of three stages Augustine was intimately familiar with, having never been able to make it past the third one). When he reached the bottom of the path and turned to start down the next one, he spotted exactly what the boy had been trying to tell him about from up above: Down the slope, directly below where the scorch marks had been, were little caves that Augustine would bet his next research grant were dens for the houndour pack.

“They’re there,” he said, and then tilted his head back to look up at the boy again. “You knew they were there all along, didn’t you?” The boy hesitated, and then nodded with his bottom lip worried beneath his teeth. In contrast, Augustine beamed. “Thank you! I knew you would make a wonderful assistant. The very best, in fact! Well done!”

The boy gaped at Augustine, but as the seconds ticked by his surprise faded, and his lips quirked up in a tiny, cautious smile.

Augustine made his way down the path, and when he reached the cave he pulled the boy off his shoulders and set him back down on the rocky path, just outside of view of the houndour within the den. The boy looked up at him, uncertain, and Augustine offered a reassuring smile in response.

“Let me go in first to make sure they’re ready to welcome us, okay?” he said. “They’re friends, but we don’t want to scare them or make them uncomfortable, and I don’t want you to get hurt if that happens. Does that make sense?” The boy nodded, still clutching both the pencil and notepad in tight fists, and Augustine clapped his hands together as he beamed. “Marvelous! Just a moment, then.”

Pokémon, despite what some humans believed, had fantastic memories. While the longevity of their memories varied from species to species (and, even more specifically, from individual to individual), it was difficult to find a pokémon that wouldn’t remember a human they had repeated contact with, whether good or bad. Some pokémon remembered based on sight, and others on smell or even the sound of a human’s voice, but most pokémon had excellent recall when it came to encounters. For this reason, Augustine had very little trepidation as he stepped into the cave, even as the houndour within scampered to their feet, tails and ears erect, the smell of sulfur off their breath strong enough to make his nose crinkle instinctively. After several years of tracking and tagging this particular pack, Augustine knew that there was very little risk that they would attack him, and the fact that they had yet to do so despite how he encroached on their space said as much. All the same, he reached into his bag as he entered their den, and produced a canister of treats from inside his bag. Before he had time to so much as unscrew the lid most of the houndour dropped their defensive posturing, their noses twitching in the air, and when he scattered the treats on the floor of the den they bounded over, short tails wagging, any agitation quickly forgotten.

Augustine smiled. He hadn’t yet had time to check and see if they were tagged (and therefore actually _were_ his houndour), but this alone made him think that they were. To think that Fulbert would have wanted his barbaracle out for protection. How unnecessary.

As the houndour gobbled the treats down (occasionally growling at one another in disagreement over who got to eat which treat), Augustine took a seat beside the pack and started pulling out his equipment: a small portable lantern to help him see in the dim lighting of the cave, his reference charts with the tag numbers of the different houndour, additional blank tags given that he thought there were more houndour than he remembered, and a blank chart so that he could record which houndour were there at present. It would be a bit hard to go check each houndour’s tags while they danced and bobbed around the treat pile (the tags were tied to each one’s left hind leg, just above the silver bands around their paws), but if he was careful enough with the houndour nearest him, then he could work his way around to the rest of—

“Hi, Sootie.”

The voice—tiny and unexpected as it was—was almost indistinguishable among the sounds of snorting and chomping from the houndour pack as they tore through their treat pile. But it was precisely _because_ it was unexpected that it caught Augustine’s ears, his heart leaping in his chest as he whipped around to try and find the source. In his joy at seeing the houndour pack again he had almost (or truthfully, _had_ ) forgotten the child waiting for him outside the mouth of the cave. He would have remembered momentarily, he was sure, as he tried to take the notes himself and had to wrangle with the houndour as he did so, but for the moment the boy had slipped his mind. Now he was reminded, but not because the boy had done anything to Augustine in order to demand his attention. Rather, as Augustine looked over at the other side of the den, he saw the boy crouched down by the cave wall, extending his hand toward a houndour pup so tiny it was clearly the runt of the litter.

What was more, Augustine realized with awe, was that the boy had actually _spoken_.

As the other houndour busied themselves with their prize, the little runt licked the child’s fingers, and the boy smiled in response. Augustine watched them closely as the boy’s smile grew and he patted the houndour pup’s head with his other hand. The pup’s tail was wagging fiercely enough for its entire butt to wriggle, and it licked the boy’s hand more enthusiastically as it scooted closer. The boy sat down on the floor of the den as the houndour pup clambered onto his lap. The boy didn’t say anything else to the little pokémon, and now Augustine was wondering if perhaps he had imagined it; but he didn’t think he had, and either way, there was one way to make sure.

“Pardon,” he said, and the boy looked quickly around at him, his eyes wide. The houndour in the boy’s lap tried to climb up his chest, licking at the underside of his chin, “but what did you say to him?”

The boy looked as if he had been caught in the act of sneaking macrons before supper, and he hastily looked down at the houndour again. He carefully shifted the pup off his lap and back onto the cave floor, as if trying to put distance between them, but the houndour bounded right back to him, bumping his head against the child’s hands. It didn’t seem as if the boy was going to speak to him after all, and Augustine tried to swallow his disappointment as he looked back at the other houndour gathered nearby. But as he did so, the boy answered.

“His name’s Soot,” the boy said. Augustine looked back to see that the boy was not looking at him, but instead had his attention fixated on the houndour pup. “And I said hi, because he’s here.”

The houndour pup seemed thrilled upon hearing his name; his tail wagged more ferociously than ever as he tried to climb onto the boy’s lap again, nipping at his fingers all the while. The boy pulled his hands up out of the pup’s reach, but otherwise didn’t seem angry or upset that the houndour pup was chewing on him. Either the pup’s teeth didn’t hurt very much yet (doubtful—puppy teeth were like little razors, in Augustine’s opinion), or he was used to this sort of behavior. Given the use of the nickname, Augustine was betting on the latter. He stood up and walked over to join the boy and the pup, and while the boy’s eyes darted to him he looked back at the houndour pup with a determined stare that made it clear he was trying hard not to look at Augustine instead. Augustine sat down beside them, and extended one hand toward the pup.

“Do you mind if I pet him?” he asked the boy.

The boy’s eyes widened, but without looking up he shook his head. The houndour pupped looked at him curiously, nose sniffing the air, tail still wagging.

“Hello, Soot,” Augustine said, and the pup’s tongue lolled out of his mouth in a happy canine smile at the use of his name. “My name is Professor Sycamore. It’s nice to meet you.”

The pup bounded off the boy’s lap to scamper over to Augustine instead, and Augustine scratched him gently beneath his snout and ears in response. The boy watched with nothing short of wonder, and Augustine gave him a few extra seconds to relax before he spoke again.

“Have you met this houndour before today?”

Once again the boy looked away, his lips pressed together in an unhappy frown as he looked back at the little houndour. As if sensing his distress, the pup turned back toward the boy for a moment, yet quickly grew distracted by the scritches he was receiving from Augustine, and pulled away from the boy again. The boy drew his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. When he finally replied, he kept his eyes on the houndour, not once looking up.

“I found him in the forest,” the boy said quietly. “He was little and alone like me, so I thought he could be my friend.”

“Well, from the looks of things you thought correctly,” Augustine said. He smiled, but the boy didn’t smile back. Instead, his lower lip trembled, and he hugged his knees more tightly.

“But I didn’t know the others would get mad. I didn’t even know there _were_ others. I just found Soot and thought we could be friends as long as I kept him secret. But the others found out, and . . .” The boy’s voice choked as his eyes welled up with tears. “I didn’t mean for them to ruin the village. I didn’t know they would do that. I just wanted Soot to be my friend.”

The missing piece of the puzzle, which Augustine hadn’t even been sure he would find, clicked into place with a resounding _snap_ in his head. It made perfect sense now why the houndour pack had ventured off Route 10 prematurely, and why they had decided to raid a peaceful, out of the way village on their way through to the mountains. They weren’t seeking food, or committing a random act of mischief and vandalism; they were looking for their lost pup.

The boy sniffed, and raised one arm to wipe away the tears that spilled over and slipped down his cheeks. The houndour pup’s ears twitched, and he pulled away from Augustine’s hands at last to scamper back over to the boy, standing up on his hind legs so that he could put his too-big front paws on the boy’s knees. The boy sniffed again, and though he didn’t smile, he resumed petting the houndour pup down his back.

Augustine felt a pang of sympathy for him.

“It does seem like you’ve made friends with him,” he said gently. “But he’s a wild pokémon, and only a baby at that. He needs to be with his pack—with his family. That’s why they came to look for him. They were worried about him, like I’m sure your family is worried about you.”

The boy said nothing. He only took a shaky breath (which sounded more like a little hiccup) and continued to pet the houndour pup.

“But like I said, you’ve done a good job at befriending him, even though you didn’t use a pokéball. I think that’s very impressive,” Augustine said. The boy furrowed his brow in confusion, and so Augustine continued. “And no one in the village was hurt, were they? There was some property damage, but that can be fixed. And since Soot is back here with his family now, the houndour won’t come back to raid the village again. Everything will be just fine, so there’s no need to be upset. You’ve learned from this, you know not to make the same mistake again moving forward, and everything will heal and be repaired in due time.” Augustine lightly ruffled the boy’s hair.

The boy looked up at him in incredulity, his expression suggesting that Augustine was someone he had either just noticed for the first time, or was a puzzle he was having difficulties working out. “You’re not mad?”

“Why would I be mad? I can’t fault you for wanting to befriend a pokémon. You made a mistake, but you’ve learned from it, and nothing was done that can’t be undone or fixed. Besides, you’ve helped me. You’re the reason I found the houndour here, and now I know why they went to the village in the first place.” Augustine beamed at him. “Why would I be angry with you for being such a wonderful assistant, hm?”

The boy merely continued to stare at him, stunned, as the sniffing and snorting from the houndour pack behind Augustine rose in volume, suggesting that they had finished off the pile of treats. Two of them wandered over to Augustine and the boy, and upon seeing them, the little houndour pup crawled away from the boy to clumsily hop toward the adult houndour instead.

“Speaking of which, we have work to do,” Augustine said. He blocked one of the adult houndour from going too near the boy with one arm, and when it pulled away from him, he scratched it beneath its snout. “Do you see the little tags I have tied around the houndour’s back legs?” The boy nodded. “Each one of those has an identification number for the houndour—two letters, and two numbers. I need to write each of those down and compare it with a list I already have. I also need to tag new houndour, such as Soot here.” Augustine paused, and then smiled. “Actually, wait here a moment.”

He stood up and darted over to his supplies, retrieving a blank identification tag and cord. Both items retrieved, he returned to the boy (and gently guided the curious pack away from him) and held out the tag for him to take.

“Do you still have your pencil?” he asked. The boy nodded, and picked the pencil up from the ground beside him. “Marvelous! Why don’t you go ahead and write Soot’s name on that tag? You know how, don’t you?”

Once more, the boy nodded. He placed the tag on the ground, and—holding the pencil in a tight fist—carefully scratched out Soot’s name. Augustine watched, curious. He did indeed know how to write it, but his grasp of cases seemed to be a bit shaky. When he was finished writing, the name on the tag looked closer to _SOoT._

“Perfect!” Augustine said, and the boy gave him a tentative smile as he picked up the tag and affixed it through the cord. It didn’t fit their tagging system at all, and Augustine _knew_ that Fulbert was going to have something to say about it, but in Augustine’s mind there was nothing to be done about the fact that this particular houndour already had a name. Fulbert would simply have to accept it. “Now we’ll just tie this to Soot’s leg, like so . . . and _voila_! Tagging complete. That was easy, wasn’t it?”

The boy nodded again, and his smile grew a little in response to Augustine’s own. Like most young houndour pups did, Soot bounded around in circles in an attempt to see what was affixed to his ankle. He stopped only when his antics caused him to tumble onto his side, paws waving in the air, the ankle tag forgotten in favor of rolling around in the dirt.

“Let’s get started on the rest of them then, shall we?” Augustine asked. “Come over here with me, and I’ll show you exactly what we we’ll be doing.”

The child was a quick study. He watched and listened patiently as Augustine showed him the different charts and files, and while Augustine felt as if the boy would agree with anything asked of him at that point, once they began reviewing the already tagged houndour and adding new tags to the ones not yet identified, the boy proved that when he said he understood what Augustine needed him to do (which was admittedly just writing down the identification tags where Augustine indicated), he meant it. The boy faithfully wrote down each tag as Augustine wrangled the houndour to check them, and as a result of his help the time Augustine was sure it _would_ have taken him to properly check on the pack was cut in half.

“That’s the last of them,” Augustine said, as the boy carefully scratched the last newly added tag onto the list. “I’m going to go ahead and pack up our equipment now, all right? You can say goodbye to Soot while I do, but then I’m afraid we’ll have to get going.”

The boy’s face fell, and Augustine couldn’t particularly blame him; goodbyes were never easy, perhaps even more so when it was a pokémon you were bidding farewell to. But he handed the pencil and notepad back to Augustine, and crossed the den to find the little houndour runt again. Perhaps as could be expected, the pup was just as ecstatic to see the boy now as when they had first entered the den.

But, maybe due to a seeming lack of organization that made Fulbert want to pull his beard out (seeming, because Augustine had no problems locating the items in his pack no matter how much of a mess Fulbert claimed it was), it didn’t take long for Augustine to pack up. Once he had all of his items gathered and his travel bag zipped up tight, he swept the child up off the ground and placed him back on his shoulders once more. Like before, the moment he was up there, the child tightly gripped Augustine’s hair in a bid to hold on.

“You’re still barefoot,” Augustine explained, “and the slope is no less dangerous going back up. Once we get back to the village, I’ll set you down again. Does that sound all right?”

The boy still looked unhappy about leaving, but this time he said, “Yes,” as he nodded.

The trek back up the mountain was a bit more interesting than the trek down. When Augustine pointed out pokémon that they spotted along the way this time around, the child provided feedback and asked questions about them. He was curious about why the sandshrew curled up into little balls when they abruptly fell off the edges of the pathways, and why they bounced as they did when they hit the earth, and why that didn’t hurt them even though it looked to the boy like it should have. He was curious, too, about why geodude didn’t have legs even though they had arms, and why _they_ didn’t roll around like the sandshrew did, instead preferring to bounce along the earth. He asked many questions, and the more questions he asked, the more delighted Augustine felt. Augustine didn’t have answers for all of them (he wasn’t precisely sure why geodude lacked legs, after all, only that they gained a pair after evolving into graveler, something which spawned even more questions still when he told the child this), but as far as he was concerned, that was more than all right. The important part wasn’t whether or not he had the answers for the questions, after all; it was that the child was curious (and comfortable!) enough to ask the questions in the first place.

But when they had finally descended the mountain on the proper side, walked through the remains of the destroyed fence, and finally reached the edge of the village, the questions ceased. The boy clammed up, resting both his arms and his chin on Augustine’s head as if trying to make himself appear smaller. Augustine might have said something about it, but as he entered the village proper he caught sight of Fulbert standing near the entrance, halfway between the boundary of the village and the mayor’s house. Fulbert turned as Augustine neared, and while Augustine waved and grinned in greeting, Fulbert stalked toward him looking as if he was ready to chew rocks.

“Where have you been?” Fulbert demanded, once he was near enough. Several of the townspeople stopped to stare. “It’s been two and a half hours. Why didn’t you answer your damn walkie-talkie?”

Augustine blinked. “Two and a half hours? Really?” He checked his watch, which confirmed what Fulbert had said.

“Yes, really. I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for the past thirty minutes,” Fulbert snapped, and he held up his own walkie-talkie with a little shake. “Why didn’t you pick up?”

“I didn’t hear it,” Augustine said, and as Fulbert gave him a dumbfounded look he brought his bag around so he could look through it. “My bag must have muffled it, let’s see . . . ah, here we go! . . . Oh.” Augustine held his own walkie-talkie up, and smiled sheepishly at Fulbert. “It looks like the volume was turned all the way down. Well, that would explain it.”

“The volume was . . . ? You’re joking, right?” Fulbert said. Augustine shrugged as he dropped his walkie-talkie back into his bag, and Fulbert dropped his face into his palm. “I can’t believe this. The walkie-talkies were _your_ idea, and you—!”

“It was an accident! For all I know, the knob got turned while it was in my bag,” Augustine said. “Besides, it isn’t that big of a deal, is it? I’m back now, and I’ve got great news. I found our houndour pack!”

Fulbert took a deep breath, and released it as a loud, agitated exhale. “You at least have better news than me, then. I didn’t find squat up in those mountains. But as great as it is about the houndour, I have another question.” He pointed the antennae of his walkie-talkie at the child riding on Augustine’s shoulders (who, Augustine noticed, recoiled), and said flatly, “What is _that_?”

Augustine opened his mouth to reply, but before he could, the mayor’s voice cut easily across the town and carried right over his voice:

 _“ALAN_!”

Both Augustine and Fulbert looked around to see the mayor heading toward them, and like Fulbert before her she looked stressed. Her eyes were fixated on the child, and Augustine—more than a little relieved that he found someone who knew the child, and perhaps even his actual parent or guardian—plucked the boy from his shoulders and set him back on his feet. Relief made Augustine smile, but the boy stared at the grass and wrapped his arms around his stomach.

Fulbert stepped back out of the mayor’s way as she barrelled past him, and without wasting a beat she grabbed one of the boy’s arms and yanked him sharply away from Augustine. The child stumbled as she dragged him, and nearly fell when she released him a few feet away. Though he had gasped when she first grabbed him (and rubbed at his arm once she let him go), he didn’t make a sound otherwise, and kept his eyes trained on his feet.

Augustine felt like he had been suddenly smacked in the face by a very clean glass door.

“What have I told you about getting in the way?” the mayor snapped. She easily towered over the boy, who wrapped his arms around his stomach again and didn’t reply or look up. “How many times have I told you? How could you ever think to bother the professor like that?”

“Hey,” Augustine said, and he took a step closer. He held out his hand, though he didn’t know whether he felt more like stopping the mayor from yelling at the boy, or more like gently pulling the child away from her. “He wasn’t—”

The mayor looked back at him, and her furious scowl was instantly replaced by an apologetic smile. “Oh, Professor Sycamore! I’m so sorry about all of this. I should have warned you to watch out for this one, but I didn’t think even he would . . . well.” She chuckled, but Augustine could hear an undercurrent of anger in it as she placed her hand on the boy’s head and shook him a little, her fingers gripping his hair far more roughly than Augustine had ruffled it back in the houndour den. “I should have known better! Alan here is like our own little absol—brings disaster wherever he goes!” She laughed again, the sound loud and aggressive.

By this point a small crowd of townspeople had formed a loose crowd behind the mayor and the child. Some stayed far enough away so that they could eavesdrop without being involved, but most had moved closer, forming little groups within the larger overall cluster. Their expressions ranged from wary to unfriendly, and the unfriendliest glares of the lot seemed to be aimed at the boy. While most of those gathered were adults, a few were children, and only they looked gleeful as they leered at the ensuing scene.

“That isn’t actually true about absol,” Augustine said, trying to ignore the gathered crowd in favor of focusing on the mayor. “They don’t actually cause catastrophe, they’re just misunderstood. And—Alan, you said his name was? Alan—”

“I’ll get him out of your hair, don’t you worry,” the mayor said, but when she turned back to Alan, her expression became far more severe. “You can go straight back to the house and stay there until I get—hang on a tic, it’s the end of the month, isn’t it? Maurice? Maurice!” The mayor turned to a mustached man standing nearby, who had started to back away until she spotted him standing among the crowd. Those standing near him stepped away, as if they didn’t want to be incriminated with him. “Maurice, here, take him. It’s your month to deal with him.”

“My—? It won’t be my month for another two days!” Maurice said. “Mayor Gosselin—”

“Two days or two hours, I’ve got enough on my plate with the houndour reconstruction—”

“And what do you think I’ve got, eh? Your house was spared far better than mine, and I don’t think my wife could handle taking the little—”

“Well we can’t have him standing around here bothering the professors, and I’m sure we’ll all need to talk back in my home, so—”

“He isn’t bothering me!” Augustine said loudly. Both the mayor and Maurice turned to look back at him, and though he knew that more cutiefly were caught with honey, the smile he tried to show them to smooth the situation over felt so strained it was almost a grimace. “Really, Alan wasn’t a bother at all. He was actually a huge help. He’s not only the reason I found the houndour, but he’s also the reason I was able to figur—”

“He _led_ you to them?” the mayor said incredulously. Several of the townspeople began whispering to themselves, and the other village children elbowed each other as they pointed at Alan. “He knew—you _knew_ about the houndour?” She rounded on Alan, who wrapped his arms still more tightly around himself, as if he could somehow make himself small enough to avoid her scrutiny.

“Of course he did,” Maurice spat. “Little changeling probably led ‘em right back here, didn’t he? Are you really surprised, Gosselin?”

Alan _had_ inadvertently led the houndour to the village, but with the way the townspeople were looking at him now, there was no way Augustine was about to confirm that. Instead, despite the feeling twisting in his gut that he didn’t really want to know the answer, he asked, “Changeling?”

Maurice cast a look Augustine’s way, and his face contorted in an expression that was caught halfway between a sneer and an attempt (however half-hearted) to look polite. “We found him in the woods, didn’t we? Little baby lost among the trees, no parents in sight—doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together—”

“No, but it sure takes one to use a wooden broom against a fire-type pokémon,” Fulbert said sarcastically. For once, Augustine didn’t feel like chiding him.

Maurice bristled. “You have something to say, sir?”

“I think I just said it,” Fulbert said flatly.

The village children looked as if they were having the time of their lives, and the other villagers were similarly looking keenly interested in the fight brewing between Maurice and Fulbert. But while Maurice breathed hard enough to cause his mustache to quiver, he didn’t seem inclined to rise directly to Fulbert’s bait.

“Well he still brought those houndour back down on our heads in the first place, didn’t he? Didn’t you?” Maurice moved to stand beside the mayor, glowering down at Alan, who didn’t so much as twitch to look up at him. “You brought them back here, didn’t you? Brought them straight into this village, isn’t that right?”

“If that is what happened, then in the kid’s defense you all let wild pokémon live in your houses and eat your food,” Fulbert said. “I don’t know what you expect him to think, but to me that sounds like you’ve normalized the concept of letting wild pokémon have the lay of the land.”

“Those are _bunnelby_ ,” the mayor said, and she waved a hand through the air as if swatting an insect. “They’re hardly the same—”

“As I said to you before, even bunnelby can be dangerous,” Fulbert snapped. “And it doesn’t matter what the hell you’ve got running around, because this kid doesn’t look much older than six and _he’s_ not going to understand the difference even if there was one!”

The mayor sniffed. “He’s five.”

“Oh, because that’s much better,” Fulbert said caustically.

“Look, that aside,” Augustine said, as Maurice drew himself up in indignation, “we located the houndour and discovered the reason why they raided the village. I can assure you that they won’t be back here at any point in the future.”

A wave of relief swept over the crowd, and the mayor gave Augustine a grateful smile that he was sure would have looked pleasant two and a half hours ago. “Thank you so much, Professor Sycamore,” she said. “We really cannot thank you enough.”

“I’m sure,” Augustine said. “More importantly—you said you found Alan in the woods, is that right? Does that mean he’s an orphan?”

The mayor gave him a quizzical look, as if she couldn’t fathom why he was asking, and from the corner of his eye Augustine saw Fulbert shoot a suspicious glance his way.

“Yes, that’s right. We found him in the woods five years ago. Don’t know who would abandon a baby, and he was near enough the village so as to make the whole thing a bit eerie, but Felicia—she’s our florist—found him and brought him back here. Our doctor gave him a look-over, and judging from that and the age of my own son we put him at around three months at the time. We’ve taken care of him ever since.”

“I see.” Augustine kept his eyes on Alan, watching him carefully. “And he changes homes every month?”

“He’s an orphan, isn’t he? Raising him is a communal effort,” the mayor said. “Mind you, he’s the only orphan we’ve got so it’s not as if we were working with precedent, but—”

“Then I’ll take him.”

“—try out—what?” The mayor froze, and it seemed as if all eyes in the village turned to Augustine, save Alan’s. “What was that, Professor Sycamore?”

“Augustine,” Fulbert said, a note of warning in his voice.

“I said I would take him,” Augustine repeated. “If he wants to come with me, that is.”

Augustine crossed the distance between them so that he could crouch down by Alan, just as he had in the mountains. Like before, he kept a measure of distance between them, something he figured was particularly important now given the way both the mayor and Maurice had treated him. Alan looked at him from the corner of his eye, but he didn’t move other than that.

“Alan,” Augustine said gently, “you did a fantastic job as my assistant today. As it turns out, I’m actually in need of a new full time assistant. I’d like to extend that offer to you, if you’d like. You would have to come stay in Lumiose City with me, which is a bit far from here, but you would get to work with pokémon every day, so it would be a fair trade, don’t you think?” Augustine extended his hand. “What do you say?”

“He doesn’t talk,” Maurice said, and Augustine clenched his jaw. “You’ll be waiting a lifetime if you’re waiting for a response.”

“Alan?” Augustine said, pointedly ignoring Maurice. If Maurice’s indignant huff was anything to go by, he noticed.

Alan stared at Augustine for a long moment from beneath his dark fringe. His gaze was oddly piercing for a five-year-old; more than he had over the two hours they spent together in the mountains, Augustine felt as if Alan was actually _searching_ him, as if he was trying to read an answer to an unasked question across Augustine’s face. Whether or not he found his answer Augustine wasn’t sure, but whether he did or didn’t, he cast a side glance at Maurice’s feet before he said—in a soft, determined voice—“Yes.”

Augustine beamed. “Marvelous!” He took Alan’s hand in his, shook it once, and then released it before bounding to his feet. “Well! I believe that settles everything, then, doesn’t it?”

The mayor gaped at him, sputtering. “I—Professor Sycamore, we couldn’t possibly ask you to—”

“You aren’t asking me to do anything, madame,” Augustine said, and he wasn’t sure if it showed, but the adrenaline running through him made his smile feel a bit fierce. “I offered Alan a job, and he accepted it. Therefore, I’m taking him back with me. That’s really all there is to it.”

“I don’t think you’ve thought this through,” Fulbert said.

Augustine’s smile didn’t waver as he looked back at Fulbert. “Oh no, I have. I’m very sure about this.”

“Augustine,” Fulbert said, with the slow, measured tone one would use to try and tell someone that they were standing on the edge of a steep drop with no handrails, “that is a human child.”

“I’m aware,” Augustine said. “But that said, this human child has to have some other clothes, doesn’t he? And shoes, a toothbrush, perhaps some toys . . . ?” Augustine looked back at the mayor. “He was staying with you, wasn’t he? Shall I accompany you to gather his things?”

The mayor nodded, though she didn’t move. “I—this is all very sudden—and very kind, but as I said, we couldn’t ask you t—”

“And as I said, you aren’t asking anything. For that matter, neither am I,” Augustine said, and the mayor’s eyes widened as she shut her mouth with a _snap_. “Now, shall we go gather his things? If that’s not an option, that’s fine. I can provide for him in Lumiose. But if he does have anything—shoes in particular—that would be most helpful.”

“He should have his shoes on,” the mayor said, and she frowned dubiously down at Alan’s feet. They were still mostly covered by the ends of his baggy pants, but his bare toes could still be spotted peeking out from beneath them, poking against the grass. “He only had the one pair. Alan, what did you do with your shoes?”

As he had in the mountain path, Alan shrugged, looking away. The mayor’s eyes flashed, and Augustine—spotting the danger before she had a chance to open her mouth—headed her off.

“Is there a store here where I could purchase another pair for him?”

The mayor looked to Augustine with a troubled, tired frown. “Until the houndour raid, yes. They tore the boutique up something fierce. The whole thing went up in flames—it’s not even recognizable anymore.”

“Of course it isn’t,” Augustine said, and he bit back a sigh. “In that case, you said that your son is about Alan’s age, isn’t that right? Do they wear the same size shoe? If so, would it be possible for me to—”

“My son only has the one pair,” the mayor said swiftly. “The same could be said for the other children in the village, too. We give only what is necessary—nothing superfluous, because supplies are limited out here. If we still had the boutique that would be one thing, but especially now that we don’t . . .”

“I understand,” Augustine said. “You don’t have to explain further. If we could just go gather the things he does have, then, I would be very appreciative.”

Alan’s lack of shoes posed a problem, but not a permanent one. As small as Cyllage City was, there were boutiques there, and one that sold clothing for children, at that. It was true that most of their apparel was geared toward athletes, but if nothing else, that would only help Alan stay comfortable as they traveled back to Lumiose. In a way, his missing shoes (wherever they had disappeared to) was almost fortuitous if the distance they had to travel to reach Cyllage wasn’t counted.

The mayor, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be thinking along similar lines of good fortune. The look she gave Augustine was dubious, as if she was debating whether or not she should argue with him. Finally, she sighed and looked back to Alan.

“Wait here and don’t move,” she said, her tone sharp. “You don’t need to cause any more trouble for the professor, you hear me?”

“He hasn’t caused me trouble at all, as I’ve said multiple times,” Augustine said, and he shoved his hands into the pockets of his lab coat so that the mayor and other villagers wouldn’t be able to see his fists. “But that said—Alan? Would you mind waiting here with my friend Fulbert? He’s nice—he’ll keep an eye out for you, I promise.”

“You know I’m a scientist and not a babysitter, right?” Fulbert asked.

Augustine gave Fulbert a sharp look. “I’m only asking for five minutes. You can do that for me, can’t you?”

Fulbert heaved a sigh. “Fine, yeah, sure,” he said. “But for the record, I think you’re making a big mistake and we’re going to talk about this later.”

“Fine, yes, sure,” Augustine shot back. He pulled one hand free from his coat to comb it through his hair, and looked back at Alan with what he hoped was a reassuring smile. Alan looked back at him uncertainly. “Just wait here with Fulbert, okay, Alan? I’ll be right back.”

Alan nodded, but he didn’t move any closer to Fulbert, instead staying where he was as he balled the hem of his shirt in his fists. Still, Fulbert did have his eye on Alan as promised, and Augustine knew that—however much and for whatever reasons he was apparently against Alan’s rescue—there was no way he would let any of the villagers do anything to Alan if they tried. His evident dislike of the villagers (Maurice in particular) aside, Augustine knew Fulbert well enough to know that he would never let harm come to a child or pokémon if he could do something to prevent it. With that thought comforting him, Augustine followed the mayor back to her home.

The mayor led Augustine through her living room and down a hallway on the other side—and, more specifically, to the last room on the left at the end of the hall. This room was small, but was in many ways just as quaint and picturesque as the rest of the house. There was a border lining the top of the walls depicting sailboats and lighthouses, and the wooden bed positioned against the center of the wall on the right had a quilt patterned with rhyhorn illustrations covering the top of it. There was a toy chest on the other side of the room, and a little mat for little toy cars spread out in front of it. It was cute, and in many ways an ideal bedroom for a little boy, but before Augustine could get too far in his assumptions and begin wondering how he was supposed to bring a toy chest back to Lumiose City with him, the mayor walked over to a bedroll spread out beside the bed, from which she gathered up a set of pajamas.

He should have known better than to assume.

“He doesn’t have his own bed?” Augustine asked.

The mayor paused in the act of handing him the pajamas, yet then passed them over with a disgruntled expression.

“We didn’t have a spare,” she said. “We only had the one, and that one is Philip’s—my son’s. It didn’t seem fair to make him give his up when Alan is only here a handful of months out of every year. He seemed happy enough on the bedroll, anyhow.”

“It’s been five . . . never mind,” Augustine said. He could tell from the look on the mayor’s face—as well as the display he had just witnessed out in the village—that there was very little he could say or point out that would have any effect. If the mayor cared that five years was more than enough time to get a second bed, she would have purchased a second bed. If she cared that very little of Alan’s behavior suggested he was happy, she wouldn’t treat him the way she did (or tolerate Maurice doing the same). However much it might make Augustine feel better to get such thoughts off his chest, he knew it would be a waste of time and effort in the end. “Where are the rest of his things?”

“His clothes are in the bottom drawer of the dresser there,” the mayor said, and she pointed to a wooden chest of drawers situated against the wall to the left of the door. Augustine walked over to the dresser and knelt down in front of it so that he could open the drawer, and as he did so, the mayor sat down on her son’s bed to watch him.

“Are these all he has?” Augustine asked.

“Yes, aside from his toothbrush. We always kept his things light since we had to move him around so much,” the mayor replied. “Made it easier.”

“Technically, you didn’t _have_ to move him,” Augustine said. He folded the pajamas and set them to the side before he unzipped his satchel, frowning as he tried to work out how he was going to fit Alan’s clothes—however limited his wardrobe was—in among his research and travel equipment.

“As I said, raising an orphan is a communal effort,” the mayor said. The defensiveness in her tone was as subtle as a tauros in a china shop. “I still can’t figure how you’re going to. Don’t misunderstand me, Professor, it’s a wonderful thing you’re doing—you’re really doing this village a grace—but are you _certain_ you want to go through with this? I don’t want—I know that boy will cause you trouble, and I’d hate to know you went through that because of my letting you take him in—”

“What do you have against him?” Augustine demanded, and he ceased trying to stuff Alan’s pajamas into his travel pack to look back at the mayor instead. Her shoulders were set, her chin raised a little, defiant, as she gazed back at him. “What do you perceive to be wrong with him? You keep saying he’ll cause me trouble, but so far today he has been nothing but pleasant. I really can’t see the problem you or anyone else in this village has with him. Do you really think he isn’t human? Is that it?”

The mayor huffed, and once again waved a dismissive hand in the air. “No, that’s just Maurice running his mouth off again. I know he’s human enough.”

“Human _enough_ ,” Augustine repeated.

“Well, he is—he’s human,” the mayor said, and her cheeks colored a bit pink. “But there _is_ something odd about him, isn’t there? Finding him in the woods like that, no parents in sight—but it isn’t just that! His parents could have been eaten by a—by a houndoom or something, that’s possible. But there are _stories_ , aren’t there? Stories of humans who are—who are a bit _odd_ , a bit _extra_. Humans who are human but have— _unearthly_ powers. There’s psychics and mediums, and when you look online there’s stories about people like those witch triplets from Unova—”

“Has Alan displayed any abilities like that?” Augustine asked, his curiosity piqued.

“Well—no,” the mayor said, and Augustine fought the urge to roll his eyes. “He hasn’t shown any _powers_ , but he’s—he’s _odd_.”

“Odd in _what way_?”

“Odd in—he never talks, for starters. Or I should say he _hardly_ talks—he’s hardly ever talked. He didn’t even have a first _word_ like most children. No—no baby talk or any such thing. Instead he had a first _sentence_. I walk into the kitchen to see him and Philip sitting around the remains of the broken cookie jar, ceramic and crumbs everywhere, and what do I hear him say? ‘Bunnelby knocked the jar down on the floor.’ In three and a half years he never said a _word_ to my ears, and all of a sudden he comes out with that? It was unnatural. It was unnerving.” The mayor sniffed. “And not to mention it was an outright, bald-faced lie. There was no bunnelby in sight. It was clear enough what he did.”

“Did you punish him for it?” Augustine asked quietly.

“Certainly. That sort of behavior isn’t acceptable in my house—or anyone’s house, really. Dessert before supper, breaking things—that’s exactly the sort of problem behavior he’s prone to, Professor Sycamore, and exactly the reason why I think you should be wary about taking him in. Why, just last week I caught him fiddling with the knobs on the stove. He could have burned the entire house down, and probably would have, as if the houndour hadn’t already made a good enough attempt!”

“Could he have been hungry?” Augustine suggested. “Perhaps he was trying to cook?”

“He’s five,” the mayor said, and however polite she had been before—however simpering she was in her insistence that she didn’t wish to cause him trouble—the dislike she harbored toward Alan made her tone disparaging. “He doesn’t know how.”

“That doesn’t mean he isn’t able to try,” Augustine said. The look on the mayor’s face suggested that she not only disagreed, but felt offended by the notion, and so he decided to let it go and move on. “But you say that he is quiet and curious—that he gets into things, as most young children tend to. Is that all? Are those the only difficulties you have with him?”

“It isn’t just that he ‘gets into things,’” the mayor huffed. “You don’t understand, Professor, you haven’t lived with him—”

“I’m trying to understand, but yes, I’m having difficulty,” Augustine said. “So if you could explain—”

“He doesn’t talk, either to ask questions or ask for things. He doesn’t cry, doesn’t make a sound, he just _stares_. And when he gets into things, he—he destroys them! Once, when he was staying with Hubert—that’s our bookseller—he climbed one of the shelving units and brought the entire thing crashing down. The entire shelf and all the books on it, right down to the floor.”

“Was he hurt?”

“Never you mind that it isn’t as if any of the books on that shelf were fit for a child’s reading level anyway—no, he just _had_ to climb up without so much as asking Hubert permission first. Another time he left the door to one of our primary food storage sheds unlocked—what business he believed he had in there I have no idea, but sure enough he left the door unlocked when he left, and the bunnelby had a _field_ day with that one, let me tell you.”

“You do allow the bunnelby to roam freely,” Augustine said, aware of how much saying so made him sound like Fulbert. “And from the sounds of things—”

“Months of careful stockpiling were _wasted_ because of his little _mistake_ ,” the mayor went on, as if she hadn’t heard him. “The other children might leave their toys out and about, or might stick coins in their mouths, but it’s nothing compared to what that one gets up to. With everything else about him, he’s not _normal_ , Professor Sycamore. There’s something about him that’s just not right. If I had my druthers I wouldn’t have suffered you running into him at all, but he had disappeared off someplace this morning and I thought—well, I hadn’t had time to look, but I’d hoped he would have stayed out of your way—”

“He did, but I found him regardless, and I’m glad for it,” Augustine said. The mayor stared at him incredulously, but after another glance down at his too-full travel bag, he sighed. “Do you have a spare bag I could use to carry his things? Mine is a bit too full of my equipment, and I can promise you that Fulbert’s is the same.”

“You still want to take him?” the mayor asked. “Knowing what sort of trouble he is?”

“Knowing that he is a quiet, curious, and clever five-year-old boy who needs a different environment he can thrive in as he grows? Yes, I do,” Augustine said. “Now, as for that spare bag—”

“I—yes. One moment.” The mayor rose from the bed and left the room, and returned a few minutes later with a small canvas rucksack, which she handed over to Augustine. “I put his toothbrush in the front pocket,” she said, as Augustine set to transferring Alan’s folded clothes into the rucksack. “So you don’t have to worry about that.”

“Thank you,” Augustine said. He didn’t bother to look back at her as he said it.

Silence enveloped them as Augustine finished packing the rucksack, and the mayor stayed quiet even after Augustine buttoned it closed and pulled the strap over his chest to criss-cross with the strap from his travel bag. She didn’t say another word until they were walking back toward the front door, and when she spoke at least, it was with a rush that suggested she was forcing herself to speak before she chickened out.

“We took care of him the best we could, you know,” she said.

“Did you?” Augustine asked. He reached the front door first, and though he opened it, he stepped aside so that the mayor could exit before him.

The look she gave him was aggressive and defensive in equal measure. “What is that supposed to mean? I don’t know what you think of us, Professor Sycamore, but I can tell you right now—”

“It doesn’t matter what I think, madame,” Augustine interrupted. “As far as either of us know, this is the last time we’re ever going to see one another. What I think of you after this point— _if_ I think of you after this point—won’t really impact your life one way or another. What matters is what _you_ think of you. If you believe that you did the best you could in caring for Alan, then you shouldn’t have anything to worry or feel bad about. But if you don’t . . .” Augustine shrugged. “You’ll have to find some way to live with that knowledge. It’s too late for you to do anything about it now.” He gestured toward the open door. “After you, madame.”

The mayor looked at him for a solid moment, her lips trembling as she pressed them together and her eyes bulged slightly. But rather than say a word she turned and stomped out of the door, muttering something indistinct beneath her breath as she went. Augustine shut the door to her home behind him, and took a deep breath.

Well, it was as he told her. They weren’t likely to ever see each other again after this. What they thought of each other really didn’t matter.

Alan was still standing by Fulbert as Augustine walked over to them, though the crowd of villagers had all but dissipated. Only Maurice lingered nearby, his eyes trained on Fulbert in a nasty look, though Fulbert seemed thoroughly unconcerned as he waited with his thumbs stuck through the belt loops of his pants.

“All set!” Augustine said brightly, and he beamed at Alan as he neared. Alan looked up at him, but didn’t smile back. “Ready to hit the road, Alan? You don’t have shoes, so I’m going to have to carry you again. There are lots of little sticks and rocks in the forest—I don’t want you to cut your feet.”

“He would have shoes if he hadn’t lost them,” the mayor said. Alan looked back down at his feet. “But I suppose that’s par for the—”

“It doesn’t really matter, because we can get new shoes in Cyllage City, and I don’t mind carrying him until then,” Augustine said swiftly. “So if that’s everything, we will be leaving now. Fulbert, do you have anything to add?”

“Not if there’s nothing I can say that will convince you to drop this plan of yours here and now,” Fulbert said.

“There isn’t, so it looks as if silence is your new best friend,” Augustine said. Fulbert shook his head and heaved a suffering sigh, but Augustine ignored him in favor of scooping Alan up off the ground and setting him on his shoulders again. This time Alan was more prepared; he still placed his hands atop Augustine’s head, but he didn’t cling for dear life when he did. Augustine smiled. “It’s time to make our way to Cyllage City, then. _Allons-y_!”

**\- - -**

The time it took to trek through the forest, combined with the time it took them to traverse Route 10, meant that they did not reach Cyllage City until the sun had all but set against the backdrop of the horizon. A small part of this, Augustine knew, was his own fault; he was the one who insisted they take a brief stop on Route 10 so that he could capture a sigilyph he found patrolling the route, both because he thought it was a neat pokémon and because he wanted to show Alan how to properly capture one as he had mentioned up in the mountains. It would be years yet before Alan was able to capture any pokémon to care for on his own, of course, but he bobbed his head in ready curiosity when Augustine asked if he wanted to see how it was done, and Augustine would never pass up a chance to teach someone something they were eager to learn.

But that break, combined with smaller breaks they took in order to eat or otherwise rest, meant that it was after sunset when they finally reached Cyllage. It wasn’t _too_ late, and Augustine was fairly certain that at least one of the boutiques would still be open, but before he could so much as take a single step toward it, Fulbert held up his hand.

“Please tell me you’re not planning on going into the store like that,” he said.

“Like what?” Augustine asked. The look Fulbert gave him was disparaging bordering on disgusted, and Augustine pursed his lips in an offended frown. “ _What_?”

“Look,” Fulbert said, and he gestured up and down at Augustine. “Look at you both. Look at his feet. You want to go into the store like that? Were you raised in a damn barn?”

“I—oh.” Augustine finally realized what Fulbert was indicating as he took in the dirt patches marring the white fabric of his lab coat, the canyon dust caked onto his shoes, and the grime that coated Alan’s feet and legs.

“Yeah. ‘Oh’ is right,” Fulbert said. “You’re both filthy, and I’m not much better. Let’s get to the hotel and wash up first. If nothing else, you can always go get the kid shoes in the morning if the shop’s closed before we’re done.”

It wasn’t a point Augustine could really argue against, and so he followed Fulbert to the hotel without complaint. While they were able to secure a suite with a bathroom (something Augustine thought might have had something to do with the alarmed look the receptionist gave them as she took in their well-traveled states), none of the rooms had more than two beds, which meant that they had to have an extra cot provided for them. That, Augustine decided, would be his. It was high time Alan experienced what it was like to have a proper bed, and though he would certainly have one of his own in Lumiose, the hotel in Cyllage City was as good a place as any for him to start getting acquainted with it.

The bathroom of their suite was small, but clean and practical. The shower was actually a combination model with a bathtub attached, something that Augustine was grateful for since he wasn’t sure how much experience Alan had with showers yet. Fulbert took the first shower, given that he had always been the in-and-out sort, and after he had his turn Augustine led Alan into the bathroom so that he could be the next to get cleaned up.

“Do you know how to bathe yourself, Alan?” Augustine asked as he turned the taps of the bathtub. Alan nodded as he tugged his shirt over his head. But even with his affirmation, Augustine frowned as he watched the tub fill with water, and frowned even more as he picked up one of the little bottles of hotel shampoo and eyed the label. There wasn’t a single word on it that suggested it was tear-free. More importantly, although most pokémon (save for those with weakness to water) could instinctively swim practically from birth, human children were another matter altogether. Augustine wasn’t sure how old was old enough to be left in a tub unattended, and although Alan seemed comfortable with the concept, the fact that he was able to venture into the mountains without anyone showing a shred of concern for him said many things about his concept of independence, none of which suggested he factored safety into the equation.

“Tell you what,” Augustine said, and Alan glanced at him briefly before he kicked his dirty jeans onto the floor. “How about I help you out with your hair, and possibly your back, while you wash everything else? Hair can be tricky sometimes, and it can be hard to reach every spot on your back, too. If we work together, bath time should be over twice as fast. How does that sound?”

“Okay,” Alan said, and Augustine exhaled, releasing the worry that had knotted in his shoulders as he did so. The last thing he needed was to accidentally let Alan drown on the first night he had him, after all.

Augustine had never given a child a bath before (though he had plenty of experience in bathing unruly, bath-phobic pokémon and he figured this couldn’t be _that_ different), but all in all, he thought it went fairly well. Alan had no problem tilting his head back so that Augustine could pour water through his hair, and though he winced in discomfort as Augustine tried to work through the tangles with his fingers (of which there were many more than expected—apparently no one had seen fit to comb Alan’s hair in a long while), he was still remarkably calm and took it like a champ. Alan washed himself while Augustine massaged shampoo and then conditioner into his scalp and through his hair, and each time Augustine managed to keep any of the suds from slipping into Alan’s eyes. That alone made the entire experience a success as far as Augustine was concerned.

When bath time was complete Augustine had Alan change into his pajamas, and then used the hotel’s complimentary hair dryer to blow dry his hair (which made it look even more wind swept and wild than it had in the mountains, funnily enough, but Augustine used his own brush to make sure that no more tangles worked their way in). That completed, Augustine shepherded Alan out of the bathroom and into the main part of the hotel suite, where Fulbert was lounged back on one of the beds, watching television.

“All done?” he asked.

Augustine grinned. “Alan is, at least. I’m going to wash up myself now. Would you mind ordering up some dinner while I’m in there? I’m sure Alan is hungry, and I know I could definitely use a bite.”

“Sure.” Fulbert sat up and swiped the room service menu from the nightstand as he asked, “What are you after?”

“Anything’s fine so long as it isn’t pizza. I feel like I’ve had nothing _but_ pizza recently,” Augustine said. He dropped Alan’s dirty clothes into the little laundry pile they had started, and retrieved a clean outfit for himself. “Alan? You can go pick something out off the menu, too. If you don’t feel comfortable talking, just point to what you want and Fulbert will order it for you.”

“Does the kid know how to read?” Fulbert asked.

“Are there pictures on the menu?”

“No.”

“Oh.” Augustine looked back at Alan, who was frowning at him from over by the empty bed. “Alan, do you know how to read?” Alan hesitated, then nodded, and Augustine smiled. “Marvelous! So you can pick something out on the menu, then, and Fulbert will order it. Meanwhile, I’m going to shower. I’ll be right back.”

Fulbert pushed himself off the bed to bring the menu over to Alan as Augustine slipped into the bathroom, and as he shut the bathroom door behind him (and set his clean clothes on the counter by the sink), Augustine couldn’t help but smile. For all the grumbling that Fulbert had done before, he didn’t seem to _actually_ have something against Alan. Surely he couldn’t have been _that_ against Alan’s rescue. He was likely just being his typical disagreeable self, and that Augustine could handle. With that thought cheering him, Augustine turned the shower taps on before he stripped off his dirty clothes (which felt grimy to the touch, now that he took the time to notice, and it was really somewhat appalling how he could go an entire day without realizing how gross his clothes became) and climbed into the shower . . .

. . . only to cringe when the barely lukewarm water hit him straight in the face.  Fulbert being disagreeable was one thing, but a shower that wasn’t passably warm was another altogether. He sighed, resolved to not let this be yet another shower where he was lost in thought for an hour or more, and reached for the shampoo bottle.

Sometimes going last really did have its consequences.

**\- - -**

By the time Augustine was finished with his shower and they had all eaten dinner, the nearest boutique was closed. This they knew without leaving the hotel room, because Fulbert had the sense to look up the store hours on his pokégear.

“They’ll reopen tomorrow at eight,” he said. “We can go get the kid shoes then.”

That decided, Augustine found a movie on television for Alan to watch (a classic about an arcanine, a meowth, and a smeargle who journeyed across the Unova region to find their way back home) while he and Fulbert went over the notes he had recorded about the houndour pack. Alan did try to participate in the research talk at first, but with only minor encouragement from Augustine and a film starring pokémon on TV, it wasn’t too difficult to divert his attention. Within the first five minutes of the film Alan turned back to look at the screen; in the first ten minutes he crawled over to sit at the end of the bed; and by the time the film hit minute fifteen he brought his knees up to his chest and hugged them there, and remained riveted on the end of the bed for the remainder of the movie. So consumed was he by the film that he didn’t hear Fulbert’s exasperated remarks about Soot’s tagging (“Augustine, really?”), or the discussion about whether or not Soot had a good chance of even surviving due to how small he was. In fact, Alan didn’t move once until the movie was over, and remained stock still as the credits rolled by on the screen. By this point it was almost ten at night, and so Augustine set his copy of the houndour charts on the end table before he stood up and walked over to where Alan was perched on the foot of the bed.

“Alan?” he said gently. “It’s time to go t—are you all right? What’s wrong?”

Tear tracks were staining Alan’s cheeks, and he jumped a little when he heard Augustine address him. He shot Augustine one wide-eyed look before he quickly shook his head and wiped away the tears with the back of his arm, but when Augustine continued to watch him (at a loss for what to do, because he didn’t know why Alan was crying in the first place), Alan said, “Nothing. I just—” He sniffed, swallowed, and then said, “I thought Shadow died, but he didn’t. He made it home to Peter.” Alan smiled, even as his eyes welled with tears again. “I’m really happy he made it home.”

Augustine huffed a laugh, and ruffled Alan’s hair. “That part always gets me, too,” he said. “But it’s getting pretty late, and I think it’s time for you to get some sleep. Let’s go get your teeth brushed so you can get to bed. I’ll help you reach the sink.”

Alan swiped his arm across his eyes again to knock away the fresh tears that had gathered there, but nodded as he hopped off the bed. Brushing his teeth was a relatively quick process; after Augustine retrieved his toothbrush from the rucksack and lifted him up so that he could sit on the counter beside the sink, Alan handled the rest. That completed, they returned to the room to find Fulbert rummaging through his travel bag, and as Alan clambered back onto the bed as per Augustine’s instruction, Fulbert produced his cigarettes and lighter from the bag.

“Meet me out there after you put him to bed?” he said, and he nodded his head toward the doors that led to the balcony off their room. Every room in the hotel they were staying at had one (they usually made it a point to try and get one given Fulbert’s smoking habit), and Augustine—a sinking feeling taking up root in his gut as he realized that Fulbert likely wasn’t as comfortable with Alan’s rescue as he had seemed before—sighed and nodded.

“Yes, sure thing,” he said. Fulbert nodded again, satisfied, and crossed the room to step out onto the balcony. Augustine looked back at Alan to see that he was staring out after Fulbert, looking concerned. Not wanting to worry him, Augustine smiled. “Let’s get you tucked in, shall we?”

Alan continued to stare at the balcony doors, and after a moment said, “He doesn’t like . . .” His eyes flickered to Augustine for a second before he looked down, his fingers constricting to ball his pajama pants in his fists. “Is it okay that I’m here?”

“Of course it is,” Augustine said, but Alan didn’t look convinced. He bit the inside of his lip, still worrying his pajama pants between his fingers. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“He—Fulbert said it was a mistake, back in the village,” Alan said quietly. “And mistakes are bad. You’re not s’posed to make mistakes. And I’m a bad kid, so—”

“No you’re not,” Augustine said, and he took a seat on the edge of the bed beside Alan so that he could put his arm around the boy’s shoulders. “You aren’t bad at all. You haven’t done anything wrong.”

Alan shook his head. “I’ve done lots of wrong things. Like with Soot, and the houndour—”

“That was an accident. Accidents don’t make you a bad person.”

“—and—and lots of other things. I was bad a lot.”

“You weren’t,” Augustine insisted, and regardless of what Fulbert was going to say to him out on the balcony, he knew now more than ever that he had made the correct decision. “Alan, listen to me. Even if you made mistakes sometimes, that doesn’t mean you were—or are—bad, okay? Everyone makes mistakes sometimes. I make plenty myself! I make mistakes all the time. Too many to count.”

“Like taking me with you?”

“No,” Augustine said firmly. “This was not a mistake. You are not a mistake. You’re my assistant, and a marvelous one at that. I’m sure of it.”

Alan looked up at Augustine at last, his expression dubious. “But Fulbert said—”

“It doesn’t matter what Fulbert said, or what he thinks. You’re my assistant, not his.” Augustine held his serious expression for a moment before he smiled and said, “Besides, Fulbert is a grumpy old man. He complains about everything. He could win a lifetime supply of ice cream and still find something to gripe about. Don’t take anything he says to heart.”

Alan blinked, and glanced toward the balcony doors again. “He doesn’t look old.”

“That’s just because time has treated him well. Trust me, he’s a grumpy old man on the inside, where it counts,” Augustine said. Alan nodded, his expression as sober as ever, and Augustine grinned at the little seed of revenge he had successfully planted. “But I really do think it’s time for you to get some sleep. We have to be up bright and early tomorrow, and you’ll need to be well rested for that.”

“Okay,” Alan said. He shifted so that Augustine could pull the blankets back, and then wriggled underneath them. Once he was tucked in, lying back against the pillows, Augustine reached over and dimmed the light between the beds.

“Pleasant dreams,” he said. “If you need anything—anything at all—Fulbert and I will be right outside on the balcony. Just come get me, all right?”

“Okay,” Alan said again. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Alan,” Augustine said. He watched as Alan turned over onto his side and curled up beneath the blankets before he sighed and turned toward the balcony doors.

It was time.

Augustine stepped out onto the balcony to find Fulbert leaning against the top rail, twirling one cigarette between his fingers as he held his lighter in his other hand. He glanced over his shoulder as Augustine shut the balcony door quietly behind him, and upon seeing Augustine, stuck the end of his cigarette in his mouth before he lit it. Augustine crinkled his nose.

“You could have smoked that while I was putting Alan to bed,” he said.

“I could have,” Fulbert said, and then exhaled a puff of smoke into the night sky, “but I knew I was going to need it for when we talked. I’ll probably need the whole damn pack before we’re through.”

Augustine heaved a sigh, and walked over to lean with his back against the handrail, his arms folded. He stood just far enough away so that Fulbert’s smoke wouldn’t end up blown in his face. “Well, go ahead and get on with it, then.”

“Augustine, what the hell were you thinking?”

“What were _you_?”

“That kid is a—is a _kid_. He’s a _kid_. You’ve taken in a _kid_.”

“Yes, I can see that. I saw it much earlier than you did, in fact, considering you asked me _what he was_ when you first saw him.”

“I was more asking what you were doing with him on your damn shoulders, and you know it,” Fulbert said. Augustine gave him a nonplussed stare as he took another drag on his cigarette, and after Fulbert blew the smoke out over the city, he said, “I don’t think you realize what it is you’ve done. You’ve taken in a _child_. A _human child_. You—out of the blue, you just _decided_ to take in a _kid_.”

“Your careful articulation really shows that you’ve made the most of the past eight or so hours you’ve had to prepare this lecture.”

“Do you realize how serious this is?” Fulbert demanded, ignoring Augustine’s snark. “Do you realize what this little whim of yours is going to cost you? Because let me tell you, of all the impulsive, ridiculous, foolish things you’ve ever—”

“This wasn’t a whim,” Augustine interrupted. “I told you, I knew exactly what I was doing.”

“Did you?”

“Yes!”

“Then I’m completely lost. Because I can’t figure out how you could possibly think that you are in any way, shape, or form ready to raise and take care of a goddamn kid.”

“This isn’t about that—”

“This is _exactly_ about that! For godsake, Augustine—”

“Keep your voice down!”

“—what do you think is going to happen now, huh? You’re going to have to take care of him. This means you’re going to have to raise him, clothe him, feed him—”

“I can do that—”

“—take care of his medical expenses, take care of his schooling, take care of—do you see what I’m getting at here? Do you? Kids are not a walk in the goddamn park. They’re expensive, they take a lot of work, they’re a full time job on top of the full time job you’ve already got being a professor. In what way do you have time for a kid? In what way do you have _money_ for a kid? In what way do you have _experience_ for a kid?”

“I’ll have time for him the way I have time for the pokémon at my lab,” Augustine said, as Fulbert took another hit off his cigarette. “I am, contrary to what you seem to think, employed with a good income, so that’s how I’ll pay for whatever he needs. And as far as experience goes, I’ll figure it out as I go along. It’s not like I’m flying completely blind here; I do have experience taking care of pokémon, you know.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“It’s close enough.”

“No, it isn’t!”

“Well, it’s more experience than what most new parents have!” Augustine snapped, and after he cast a glance at the door he lowered his voice again, and heaved a frustrated sigh as he combed his hand through his hair. “Besides, it’s not like—it wasn’t about that. I wasn’t thinking about that.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Fulbert said caustically.

Augustine glared at him. “What I was thinking about is the fact that he was a defenseless child living in a village full of people who apparently hated him for reasons unknown. I found him up in those mountains, Fulbert. He was completely alone. And you saw the mayor and the others; they didn’t care that he had somehow managed to wander up into the mountains by himself. They only cared that he was supposedly bothering me. Had he been eaten by a wild pokémon, I doubt any of them would have noticed for a week. They probably would have been glad for it.”

“Yeah, probably,” Fulbert agreed.

“On top of which, they blamed him for the houndour raid. That Maurice person especially did, and Alan was supposed to be going to stay with him. What do you think would have happened to him had we left him there? What do you think Maurice would have done?”

Fulbert ashed his cigarette in a small glass tray he had sitting on the top rail. “Probably nothing good.”

“Exactly. And you expect me to stand by and allow that to happen? To _leave_ and allow that to happen? How could I do that? How could _you_? How could you be such a—”

“I’m not saying we should have done _nothing_ ,” Fulbert said, a growl of frustration in his own voice. “I’m saying that there are these people who exist called police officers who, if you call them, will go rescue abused children and help them find homes with people who are capable of caring for them.”

“Oh yes, that sounds like a brilliant plan,” Augustine said. “Let’s call the Geosenge or Cyllage police departments and tell them that there is a child being abused in a village that isn’t under either of their jurisdictions. Once they figure out whose job it is to handle it—and that could take over a day in and of itself—they’ll try to send a squad out at their earliest convenience. This could be several more days, if not a week, if not more than that. Then they have to actually find the village, which as you and I both know, is something that is completely simple and not at all absurdly difficult given the lack of its location on most maps. All in all, it could be a month or more before Alan is rescued, if he ever even is.” Augustine gave Fulbert a scathing look. “Marvelous plan, Fulbert. Well done.”

Fulbert huffed an aggravated sigh. “Fine. You’re right. Calling the police probably wouldn’t have helped him immediately.”

“Thank you.”

“But that still doesn’t mean you have to go off promising to take the kid in as your damn assistant, or whatever it is you sold him. Augustine, you can’t do that. You’re not prepared to do that.”

“Says who?”

“Says me, the guy who remembers vividly when one Augustine Sycamore decided to eat his cereal out of a baseball helmet.”

“All of our cereal bowls were dirty!”

“Dish soap exists and we had some!”

“And that was four years ago—”

“It was _three_ —”

“I’ve matured since then.”

“Have you? Because I seem to remember a day last month when you did nothing but spend the entire day sending me captioned pictures of that psyduck of yours wearing different outfits and posing around your lab.”

Augustine rolled his eyes, and leaned back so that he could look up at the star-strewn sky above. “Well, you know how we youth of today are, Fulbert. Sometimes we like to have fun every once in a while. Believe it or not, it doesn’t mean we’re wholly irresponsible.”

“No, but that’s exactly my point,” Fulbert said, and the fact that he didn’t once again rise to the age bait made Augustine frown and look back at him. “You’re young, Augustine. You’re only twenty-five. Are you really prepared to become a parent right now? Is that really what you want? And even if it is what you want, do you really, _genuinely_ believe you’re ready for that? Because it isn’t like taking care of a pokémon. Aside from when they’re newborns and when they’re sick, pokémon can more or less take care of themselves so long as you provide them with shelter and food. Kids aren’t like that. Kids require a lot more work, time, and effort. Do you seriously mean to stand here and tell me that you’re ready to commit to that?”

Augustine didn’t answer him immediately. Instead he leaned back against the top rail again, and raised his eyes to the sky above the hotel roof. It was a surprisingly clear night; the clouds that lined the inky backdrop of the sky were thin and wispy, silvery from the light of the moon, and did very little to obscure the stars. Looking at the stars made it easy to believe that everything would be all right, as much as cloud gazing during the day did. It was hard to feel anxious when doing something so calming, and sky gazing was—had always been—calming for Augustine.

But no amount of gazing at the stars would teach him what he needed to know in order to care for Alan full time, and he knew that. He wasn’t completely hopeless; he knew that no number of anecdotes about his odd choice in dishware during university or Clickchat Stories starring Camille he sent Fulbert completely discredited him as a guardian. But he also knew that, as of that morning, he hadn’t so much as _considered_ raising a child. Not even the fact that his friend Meyer’s wife had recently given birth to their son had put the thought in his head. Nothing in his lab was child-proofed, Augustine didn’t have the slightest clue of how to go about child-proofing things (or if he even needed to—did five-year-olds need things child-proofed?), and just a little while ago he had asked Alan if he needed help bathing before realizing that he shouldn’t leave a five-year-old unattended in the tub. What if he had chosen to do just that? How easy would it have been for Alan to drown? He had realized his mistake before it was too late, thankfully, but what if he didn’t realize it next time? Could he really say that he always would?

Augustine took a deep breath, and released it heavily.

“I don’t know,” he said finally, and he wasn’t entirely certain whether he was answering Fulbert or himself. “What I do know is that I didn’t have much of a choice. And don’t say that I did, because the only other option would have been to leave him there, and there is no way that I could have done that, not with the way they treated him, and not with how angry they were with him—how much they blamed him. They hated him, Fulbert. They barely even considered him human, that Maurice especially.”

“Maurice was a mouth-breathing troglodyte,” Fulbert said bluntly, and Augustine snorted a laugh. “But that doesn’t mean you have to take in the kid to raise him yourself. So you couldn’t call the police and social services while he was still there—okay, fine. Social services exist in Lumiose, you know. You can hand him over once we get back.”

“The large number of homeless children on the streets really speaks a lot to Lumiose City’s foster care system’s competency,” Augustine said, and he shook his head. “No, I’m not going to just throw him into the system. I can’t do that. The uselessness of it aside, I already told him that he was going to come back to stay with me. What would it do to him if I went back on my word and handed him over to social services as soon as we got back? He already believes that he’s a bad child—something your attitude isn’t helping with, by the way—and I don’t want to make that worse. I am not _going_ to make that worse when they were already passing him around like a sack of unwanted vegetables.”

The look Fulbert gave Augustine was nothing short of immensely frustrated, but rather than reply immediately he took another long drag on his cigarette and exhaled the smoke over the railing. They stood in silence, Fulbert looking down over Cyllage while Augustine stared up at the sky, but after a few beats Fulbert tried again.

“Okay, then why not try looking into missing child reports when we get back? Say his parents are still alive, and they accidentally lost him in the woods when he was a baby—”

“Is it really possible to accidentally lose your baby in the forest?”

“—they might have put in a missing kid report. It’d be years old at this point, but if you can find it you might be able to find them. Handing him over to his real parents wouldn’t be as bad as chucking him into the system, would it? If anything, I’d think he’d be happy to go back with his real mom and dad, provided they aren’t like the useless jackwagons that populated that village.”

It was an option that Augustine hadn’t considered before, but also one that he couldn’t find much fault in aside from the likelihood that there was no missing child report, or that even if there was, Alan’s parents might be impossible to find by now. But even with the high probability that a search would be in vain, that wasn’t a reason to not try in the first place, and Augustine knew it.

“Yeah,” he said, and Fulbert’s shoulders sagged in relief. “That’s a good idea. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. I’m just glad you’re seeing some sense at last,” Fulbert said. Augustine scowled at him, but Fulbert didn’t see it as he took one last drag off his cigarette before grinding it into the bottom of the ash tray to put it out. “And you don’t have to look alone,” he said, his voice thin as he exhaled the last of his smoke. “I’ll help. Between the pair of us, if there are parents to be found, we should be able to find them by the end of the month at most. You’ll just have to keep an eye on the kid until then.” He grinned. “I’m sure the shine will have worn off the whole new parent gimmick by then, too, so it’ll be an extra relief for you when we find his parents.”

“ _If_ we find his parents,” Augustine said, and though he resented Fulbert making it sound as if he was mercurial, he chose not to comment on it. “We might not. And even if we do, we aren’t going to begin looking for them until after we make it back to Lumiose, which is going to take another few days at the least. So with that being said, I’m going to have to ask—no, I’m telling you to watch what you say and not let on about how much you dislike him.”

Fulbert looked indignant. “I don’t _dislike_ him,” he said. “I don’t even _know_ him. He’s just some random kid. What I dislike is the fact that you chose to adopt him out of the blue without thinking about the cons—”

“I understand that,” Augustine cut in, and he jerked his head to the balcony doors, “but he doesn’t. He’s only five, Fulbert, and as you yourself told the villagers earlier today, he isn’t going to understand subtle distinctions like that. He just thinks you dislike him, and considering the background he comes from . . .”

Fulbert sighed, and held up his hands in surrender. “All right, all right. I get it. I won’t say anything more on the subject where the kid can hear.”

Augustine smiled. “Thank you.”

“But in the meantime, you try not to make any more promises you can’t keep,” Fulbert said seriously, and he reached for his cigarette pack again. Augustine made a face. “The way you were going on today suggests the next thing you’ll be promising him is a whole herd of rapidash.”

“It’d probably be better if he started with ponyta, actually,” Augustine said, and he grinned as Fulbert gave him a deadpan look. “I’m only joking, calm down. Are you really going to smoke another? I thought we were done arguing.”

“It’s a nice night for it,” Fulbert said, and it was his turn to nod toward the balcony doors as he lit up, his words obscured by the cigarette he held between his lips. “You going to bed?”

“About to, yes. Will you be in when you’re done?”

“Probably. What time do you want to be up tomorrow?”

“Six sounds like a good time. Six-thirty at the latest. I don’t want us to have to rush too much if we can avoid it.”

“All right. I’ll wake you up at six, then.” Fulbert exhaled a cloud of smoke to the sky, and then pointed his cigarette at Augustine. “Don’t whine about it.”

“I don’t _whine_ ,” Augustine said, and he rolled his eyes as he headed back toward the balcony doors. “But yes, I’ll see you in the morning. Goodnight, Fulbert.”

“’Night, Augustine.”

It wasn’t that surprising that Fulbert needed another cigarette to unwind, really. As much as he could (and would) initiate confrontations at the drop of a hat, Augustine knew that Fulbert didn’t enjoy them any more than Augustine himself did (which was to say, not at all). In truth, although Augustine had never been much of a smoker himself (he had tried it in college, and decided it wasn’t for him), in that moment he almost wished he was just so that he could have a way to release the stress knotted at the base of his neck. The only other way he could think to relieve it was with a nice glass of wine, but that was something he hadn’t thought to bring with him and their room didn’t come with a minibar.

He opened the balcony doors, slipped quickly back inside, and shut them behind him as quietly as he could manage. It wasn’t until he turned back toward the room that his heart skipped a beat, and it took him a second to realize that it was because he didn’t see a tuft of black hair against the pillows at the headboard of the bed nearest the doors. But as he took a closer look at the bed (and tried to calm his heart back down out of his throat), he realized that while Alan himself wasn’t immediately visible, there was still a small, child-sized bundle visible beneath the blankets.

Augustine sighed in relief. Potential crisis number two was successfully averted. That just left potential crisis number three.

He strode over to the bed and tugged the blankets back, and—just as he had suspected—found Alan curled up in a little ball beneath them. Alan’s shoulders rose and fell as he breathed (meaning that potential crisis number three—suffocation—was successfully averted as well), but when his blanket shield was pulled away his face scrunched in a little frown, a sound of discontent escaping his lips. It took only a second for him to open his eyes, blinking blearily in the dim light of the lamp, and as he woke he turned to look up at Augustine in dazed confusion. Augustine smiled apologetically back, and dropped the blankets around Alan’s shoulders.

“Sorry,” Augustine said. “I didn’t mean to wake you, but the blankets were covering your face. I was worried. You have to be able to breathe, kiddo.”

“. . . It’s too bright,” Alan mumbled, and he made to pull the blanket up over his head again, yet stopped as he noticed Augustine still watching him. He ducked his head instead, burying it into his pillow as best he could.

“Ah,” Augustine said. “You’re not a night-light person, is that it?” Alan shook his head (as best he could with his face still turned halfway into his pillow, anyway), and Augustine grinned. “Well, I can fix that. I’ll just turn this light off all the way, then. And in return, you won’t suffocate yourself with either your pillow or your blankets. How does that sound?”

Alan turned back over so that his face was no longer mushed against his pillow, and nodded. “It sounds good.”

“Good! Then I’ll just turn this light off like so . . .” Augustine reached over and switched off the lamp, leaving them in darkness. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust, but when they did, he smiled down at what he could make out of Alan in the dark. “And we should be all set. Goodnight, Alan. Pleasant dreams.”

“Goodnight,” Alan said, and this time there was a catch in his voice—a brief hesitation, as if he was going to say something more. But if he had, he seemed to ultimately decide not to. Instead, he cuddled back down against the pillows again, drawing the blankets closer around him, and Augustine turned away so that he could retrieve his own sleep clothes and toothbrush from his travel bag before he headed to the bathroom to change.

It had been a long day. That was the understatement of the century, and as he brushed his teeth and prepared for bed he could hardly believe that everything that had happened—reaching the village, finding the houndour, finding Alan, unofficially adopting him—had all happened within less than twenty-four hours. When he thought about it like that, he could understand where some of Fulbert’s alarm was coming from—could understand, at least a little, why he was so panicked at the fact that Augustine had decided to take Alan in the way he had. All the same, Augustine didn’t regret his decision, and he couldn’t say with any degree of certainty whether he was truly worried about whether or not he would be able to find Alan’s real parents. He supposed it would be good if he could find them, but did that really mean it would be bad if he didn’t?

He shook his head as he rinsed off his toothbrush in the sink, and reached for one of the washcloths positioned next to it to wipe his mouth. He didn’t know. He knew what Fulbert thought on the subject (Xerneas _knew_ did he know what Fulbert thought on the subject), but he wasn’t so sure himself.

What he was sure of, as he reentered the main suite and dropped his toothbrush and day clothes over by his travel bag, was that he was really too tired to think about it. He flopped onto the rollout cot the bellhop had brought up to the room earlier and practically melted into the thin mattress, so much so that he had to struggle to drum up the motivation so that he could pull the covers up from beneath him so that they covered him instead. Yes, he was _much_ too tired to think about it now. He could think about it in the morning, or three days from now, or three weeks, or three years. Three decades, maybe. Three centuries. Three millennia. Three . . .

He was asleep before he figured out what span of time came next.

**\- - -**

Augustine was awoken the next morning by the feeling of something hard and plastic tapping against his head, and after he swatted at the offending object and opened his eyes, he found that the offender was Fulbert, and the item was Fulbert’s pokégear. Without a word Fulbert showed the screen to Augustine, and when Augustine rubbed the sleep dust from his eyes so that he could get a clearer look, he saw that the picture on the screen was one of himself. More specifically, Fulbert had taken a picture of Augustine asleep on the cot . . . with Alan sleeping beside him. Augustine looked down, and indeed found Alan curled against his side, evidently having decided to abandon his own bed at some point during the night to share Augustine’s with him instead.

“I thought I would immortalize it,” Fulbert said quietly, and he smirked as he snapped his pokégear shut and slipped it back into his pocket. “It was just so cute I couldn’t resist.”

“I appreciate the gesture,” Augustine said. Fulbert’s grin only grew as he turned away to finish getting ready now that Augustine was awake.

Fulbert’s lighthearted joke set the tone for the rest of the morning. Alan was easy enough to rouse from sleep, and fairly agreeable when it came to getting ready. The only dissent he offered was over whether or not he was going to eat breakfast; it was apparently something he wasn’t used to, and something he was reluctant to start that morning, no matter which breakfast foods Augustine offered or how much Augustine tried to explain that breakfast was important. Ultimately, they compromised on the chocolate chip granola bar Augustine had tried offering him in the mountains the day before, and though it took Alan an hour to chew through the whole thing (an hour which was spent going to the boutique to get him a new pair of shoes, and then on the road since he could eat the granola bar while walking), he did eventually finish it, which offered Augustine some relief. It wasn’t an ideal breakfast, but it was something, and the importance of breakfast was something he felt he could teach Alan over time.

The rest of the journey back to Lumiose City went smoothly. True to his word, Fulbert didn’t once bring up his disapproval of Alan’s adoption again throughout the trip, and by the time they were leaving Camphrier Town, he even seemed to have warmed to the idea a little.

“You know, the kid does look an awful lot like you,” he said. “You sure he’s not the result of some illicit tryst you had years back?”

“I have never had an illicit tryst with a woman in my life, and you know it,” Augustine said. Fulbert snorted a laugh as he swung his travel bag back onto his shoulders, and Augustine grinned before he felt a gentle tugging on his coat sleeve. He looked down to find Alan staring up at him. “What is it, Alan?”

Alan’s expression was so serious it was almost grave as he asked, “What’s a lisit tryst?”

At this, Fulbert burst out laughing, even as Augustine felt heat rise along the back of his neck. “It’s—er—” Augustine cleared his throat. “It’s a—it’s when two adults have relations that are, ah, not . . . approved of, or generally considered legitimate. By society.”

“Oh.” Alan’s brow furrowed. “What are relations?”

“Um—actions,” Augustine said, but the piercing curiosity didn’t fade from Alan’s eyes. “Things. Things that adults do, sometimes.”

“What kind of things? What are relations like?”

Augustine opened his mouth to try and answer, but no words came to him. He looked over at Fulbert, who was watching the entire scene unfold with a massive grin. Augustine shot him a withering look as he said, “Do you see what you’ve done?”

“You’re the one who wanted this,” Fulbert said, and if anything, his grin only became more Cheshire in nature as he started toward the door of their hotel room. “So good luck. Make me proud! I’m sure you’ve got this one in the bag, Augustine.”

The only bag Augustine had was the travel bag that he wanted to wallop Fulbert in the head with, but Fulbert’s exit provided him with the perfect opportunity to duck out of the conversation himself, and he knew it. “Come on, Alan,” he said, as Alan continued to frown at him in confusion, “we had better get going. We’ll find the answers to your questions along the way.”

Alan was still frowning, as if he could tell that Augustine was avoiding the question (and he was sharp, so perhaps he did), but he let the subject drop as they hit the road regardless.

The journey up Route 5 took the greater part of the day, not helped by the fact that they had a late start, or by the fact that there was an incident with a wild abra that decided to steal Fulbert’s travel bag before teleporting off. By the time they located the abra (and Fulbert’s belongings) and finally made it back to Lumiose City, the sun had already set, and all three of them were feeling worn out. Fulbert walked back to Augustine’s lab (home, really, but it was all the same difference in the end) with them, and they paused by the front steps to part ways.

“I’ll get started on the search in the morning,” Fulbert said, and Augustine didn’t need him to elaborate on what he meant. Augustine nodded, and when he did, Fulbert looked down at Alan properly. “Be good, pipsqueak. And start eating breakfast. It’s important.”

Alan nodded, though he looked away as he did so and didn’t offer a direct reply.

Fulbert frowned—no doubt bothered by the fact that Alan still wouldn’t speak directly to him—but didn’t say anything further before he extended his hand toward Augustine. “I’ll let you know what I find out. You do the same, Augustine.”

“Of course I will,” Augustine said, and he clasped Fulbert’s hand, shaking it once and trying not to wince at how tight Fulbert’s grip was. “If nothing else, I’m sure one of us will be in touch when it’s time for the next expedition.”

“Hopefully there won’t _be_ a next expedition,” Fulbert groused, and Augustine grinned.

“You don’t mean that,” he said.

“See if I don’t,” Fulbert countered. “But all right, I’m off. Talk to you tomorrow, or in the next few days or so.” He reached down and lightly tapped Alan on the head as a means of goodbye, before he turned and started down the street.

When Fulbert was no longer within earshot, Alan looked up at Augustine. “Fulbert lives somewhere else?”

“Yup. He has his own house. And speaking of, I think it’s time to show you ours,” Augustine said. It occurred to him that, if they were going to find Alan’s real parents, it probably wasn’t the wisest decision to refer to his home as _theirs_ —but then, if they never _did_ find Alan’s parents, the lab _would_ be his home, so he figured there probably wasn’t too much harm in it, either. “Come on. Let’s go inside.”

When Augustine had graduated from university, he did so with every honor to be gained and then some. Regardless of Fulbert’s opinion on how viable mega evolution was as an area of research, Augustine’s thesis had impressed the heads of department to such a degree that the research grant he was awarded upon graduation was one of the largest ever given by the school. As a result, rather than spend several years or more trying to impress the scientific community so that he could save up money to purchase a decent lab, Augustine was able to afford his dream lab (and home) right out of the gate. That was the home that Augustine brought Alan into, and he couldn’t help but grin as Alan’s eyes widened to take up half his face as they entered the foyer.

Augustine’s lab was, in essence, half house and half laboratory, but built without a clear divide. Rather than regulating one half of the building to be a laboratory and the other half to be a house, Augustine had it constructed so that the rooms overlapped with one another. The foyer was designed like the foyer of any home, with warm, faux-wood laminate flooring and both a coat and shoe rack by the door. The kitchen was to the left, but the room immediately to the right of the foyer was a research room, complete with several computers and a massive monitor along the far right wall. That room led through to a dining area, which connected both to a living room with a television and a patio that led out to the yard where most of the pokémon Augustine cared for lived. The idea, Augustine had told Fulbert, as Fulbert took in what he called the “haphazard” layout of the building, was that he wanted his laboratory to be a _home_ for both himself and his pokémon, and that meant blending everything together comfortably.

“This is my life’s work, but that means it has to be a part of my life,” Augustine had said. “If it’s going to be a part of my life, then this has to be a place where I not only work, but comfortably live. I think it’s nice like this.”

“I think I shouldn’t have expected anything less from you,” Fulbert had said, and Augustine didn’t know whether that was supposed to be a compliment or not.

But whatever Fulbert’s opinion had been, Alan’s seemed to be one of awe. He let Augustine tug his shoes off his feet and deposit them on the shoe rack, and once his shoes were off and he was standing in his socks in the foyer, Alan tore his eyes away from the tall ceilings and massive rooms to look at Augustine in wonder.

“You _live_ here?” he asked.

“I do indeed,” Augustine said, beaming. “And now, so do you. Let’s go get a look at your room, shall we?”

While the majority of the living quarters were on the first floor, the bedrooms were all on the second. In truth, despite the overall size of his home, Augustine only had two bedrooms: his, which was the first room off the stairs, and the guest room, which was the next door down. The idea behind the guest room had been that it could be used by one of his assistants if they ever needed to stay the night, provided they worked too late to catch a taxi home. Augustine supposed that idea was out of the question now, though at the same time, he _had_ brought Alan on as his assistant, hadn’t he? Even if that was more of an excuse to get him out of the village than anything, he supposed that Alan having an extended stay in the guest room was still putting the room to its intended purpose.

“Here we are,” he said, and he opened the door before he stepped aside to let Alan enter first. “Your very own room.”

Alan cautiously crossed the threshold into the room, gazing at it with the same amazement that he had given the rest of the lab. The guest room wasn’t anything too special, in Augustine’s eyes; it only had a twin bed, a nightstand with a lamp, and a dresser at present. But then again, while he couldn’t say for sure what Alan had experienced in the other homes he had been shuffled between back in Isolé Village, what he had seen at the mayor’s house suggested to him that Alan had never had more than a bedroll to call his own. Thinking about it like that, he could see why the room impressed him so.

Augustine pulled the canvas rucksack containing Alan’s clothes from his shoulders and set it down by the dresser, and as he did so, Alan hopped up to sit on the bed. The mattress bounced a little under his weight, and he smoothed his hand down over the comforter before he looked back at Augustine.

“This is my room?” he said. “It isn’t . . . anyone else’s?”

“Nope,” Augustine said, and he smiled to show that he meant it. “It’s all yours. Of course, I understand if it doesn’t feel that way right now. We can always get you more personal things later.” Which was, Augustine thought, something that Fulbert would call another promise he couldn’t keep that he shouldn’t make, but he didn’t see a reason why he couldn’t promise to get Alan his own bedset. If nothing else, if Alan’s parents were located, they could always take the bedset with them.

Alan nodded slowly, looking around the room again. After a few seconds, and without looking at Augustine, he asked quietly, “How long can I stay here?”

“As long as you want,” Augustine said, and if promising a bedroom set was a promise Fulbert wouldn’t have agreed with, Augustine didn’t want to know what Fulbert would have thought of this one. As Alan looked quickly back at him, he said, “If you don’t like it here we can always look into other arrangements, but—”

“No,” Alan said quickly. “I do. I—” He clamped his mouth shut and looked away again, pressing his lips together as he cast his eyes around the room.

For the first time in days it felt awkward between them again, as it had in the mountains before Alan had first opened up to him. The weight of Augustine’s own travel bag felt suddenly heavy on his shoulders, and he adjusted the strap as he cleared his throat.

“Well,” he said, and he pushed some enthusiasm into his voice, “I think it’s time we both get unpacked. I’m going to go right next door to unpack my bag—you can put your clothes into the dresser, if you want. Or if you need help, you can just leave it where it is and I’ll get to it after I put mine away. If you need anything, you can just come right next door and ask, all right? I’ll be in the next room over.”

Alan nodded, but as Augustine turned to exit the room, he said, “Um—!”

Augustine paused in the doorway, and looked back. “Yes?”

Alan was staring at his knees, and he scrunched the denim of his jeans into his fists, curling and uncurling his fingers in the fabric as he struggled with his words. “A-Are you . . . um . . . what . . .” He cast a glance up at Augustine for only a second before he looked down again. “What . . . should I call you?”

Augustine blinked, taken off-guard by the question. “Just ‘Professor’ is fine,” he said. “I don’t think we need to be more formal than that.”

As soon as Augustine gave his answer, Alan’s entire countenace seemed to fall. His shoulders slumped, and his tone was as dejected as the look he aimed at his knees as he said, “Oh. Okay.”

Silence stretched between them for a few seconds. Augustine was at a loss for what to do. It was clear that the answer he provided was not the one that Alan was hoping to hear, even if it had seemed like the most logical answer at the time (as well as the first one that had popped into Augustine’s head, admittedly). He had, after all, introduced himself as Professor Sycamore in the mountains, and the official story was that he was bringing Alan on as his new assistant. Considering both of those facts, having Alan address him as ‘Professor’ made the most sense. But then, he supposed, it wasn’t just that Alan was coming to work for him; Alan was coming to live with him as well, and Fulbert’s freak out the night they had spent in Cyllage City made it clear enough that Alan’s new “job” as Augustine’s assistant was far more of an excuse to adopt him than anything else. Alan was a clever child; even if he hadn’t overheard the conversation from the balcony, there was no reason to believe he hadn’t reached a similar conclusion. If that was the case, then Augustine could guess well enough what answer Alan was looking for. But even if that was the case—even if Augustine knew what Alan wanted to hear, knew what Alan _wanted_ to call him—was that an answer he could give? If he did, and Fulbert managed to locate Alan’s biological parents, what then?

No, it wasn’t an answer he could give just yet. Not with the question of Alan’s biological parents still up in the air. For now—for _now_ , ‘Professor’ was fine.

“Well,” he said again, and he cleared his throat a little to try and alleviate the crack as Alan looked back up at him. “I’m going to go take care of this.” He adjusted his travel bag strap again to show what he meant, and Alan nodded. “You can unpack, or else just get acquainted with your room. I’ll come check on you when I’m done, all right?”

“Okay,” Alan said. “Thanks, Professor.”

“Of course, Alan.”

Alan hopped down from the bed to walk over to the dresser and canvas rucksack as Augustine stepped back into the hallway, and Augustine left both the doors to Alan’s room and the door to his own open just in case Alan needed anything else. Once in his own room, he pulled his travel bag from his shoulders and dropped it unceremoniously on his floor. His shoulders were stiff, and as he rolled them he felt a little knot at the base of his neck pop, releasing some of the tension from his muscles. That felt nice, but it would probably feel nicer after a hot shower.

But a shower would have to come later. First they had to get unpacked, and then he had to figure out something to make for dinner. Once dinner was through, Alan would probably need a bath . . . and Augustine still had to look over the notes his part-time assistant, Sophie, more than likely left him during the days she spent caring for the pokémon in his absence. He would have to work that into the schedule somehow, too.

Augustine looked at his watch.

It was a little after seven. His parents were usually in bed by nine. Provided he wasn’t able to fit calling them in before then, he was fairly certain he knew what he was going to be doing first thing in the morning. After all, he thought, smiling a little to himself as he knelt down to unzip his travel bag, setting aside any advice he needed when it came to caring for a five-year-old child . . .

Well, it was probably only right to inform them that they more or less became grandparents overnight.


End file.
